


Fable des Creux

by kharisei



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amaurotine Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Body Horror, Bondage, Breathplay, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Consensual Violence, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Fluff and Smut, Heavy Angst, Mildly Dubious Consent, POV Second Person, References to Depression, Sexual Tension, Voyeurism, ambiguous WoL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-01-02 10:29:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21160190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kharisei/pseuds/kharisei
Summary: Washed out to a point where altruism begets cognizance. And all of who you are and what you have believed in, to take you in life thus far, is all the more unraveling at its seams. A horrid place to reside for a mighty hero with so much on the line.Be that as it may, a certain Paragon makes himself known. It shakes you to the core.





	1. If Only

**Author's Note:**

> This story heavily follows along with the plot in Shadowbringers, inspired by the implied Emet-Selch/WoL relationship. Please note the tags/warnings. Rating will adjust with the coming chapters... ;)  
The first chapter and the one that will follow are set after the main story quest, Bearing with It.

You had to escape from that insufferable crowd, what with all the boisterous festivities of the Night’s Blessed in celebration of your most recent victory in ushering darkness to their realm. Some of your party had broken up after Runar’s invitation to a feast of sorts, Thancred and Minfilia departing for the Crystarium while Urianger and Y’shtola chose to linger behind to indulge themselves.

Never much one for large gatherings, you are not ready to retire from these tranquil grounds just yet. Tucked away deep within the recesses of the Rak’tika Greatwood, really you may have wandered a bit too far, shrouded from everyone so you could finally breathe and process what has been transpiring since you had been summoned to the First.

You silently gaze into your reflection from the dismal water's surface of the swamplands, the loud hum of insects deaf to your ears, leather boots sinking into the soft sludge of its marshy shoreline. You have long grown weary, overworked muscle and bone rattling with ache like the aged sprawling tree limbs that clatter and spar in the winds overhead.

The light beneath your skin, ever afire and red-hot imbued within your aether. You have not been faring as well as you have let on to your companions.

Slowly you close your eyes and tip your head back behind enervated shoulders, chin pointed towards the starry heavens as you inhale the scent of the dense, dusky forest around you.

Slightly fragrant and yet slightly stagnant, much like the life you have been leading thus far. There are rewards aplenty, but there are always prices to pay. Putting forth your most valiant of efforts to fight in the name of Hydaelyn, you have never been privy to another way of life.

But exactly what is it that you are _truly_ fighting for again? It has been becoming more and more of an enigma as of late.

Much of your youth had been stripped bare from you, no time for yourself and no time to mourn over its loss. As an acclaimed warrior, you are exalted by nearly every life that you touch, no matter how humble or highborn— though not one will ever get close enough nor will one should ever truly care to, the harrowing demons you carry and the postulated brief lifespan of a soldier with a life forever on the line.

The very few who had breached past your walls and gotten to the heart of you, were all long dead and buried before their time. The same fate you would share soon enough, to be sure.

It is a lonely, stunted path—constantly on the run, at the will of everyone but your own. Even of other entire _worlds_ at this point.

Although not entirely in the budding spring of life, you have yet some youth, as bridled as it has been for many long and tiresome years. You still toil to retain your own petty dreams and desires, to settle down if the dust would ever see fit to clear and the universe would at last pivot to rest for some modicum of time. Where that would be you do not rightfully care. You would like to think that this quiet stretch of forested tapestry would do—even as far from “home” as it is, and perhaps all the better for it.

As a roaming adventurer in your heart, you never truly felt attached to any land that you had traveled to in your line of duty. Of course, you never had the time to smell the roses, per se, before you were swept off your feet to the next bloodied battlefront. Besides, there are mainly painful memories etched into your thoughts of everywhere you have been in the past.

It seems that is a constant in your existence—those memories, steeped in bloodshed.

Children are never divulged of these troubling revelations of introspection in their cozy bedtime stories, most definitely not so when vaunted heroes are spoken of—least of all with Hydaelyn’s Champion of Light. They will only hear of the tales of the glory, of elevating oneself beyond the trivial and superficial cravings of the true mortal psyche. No room for mortal deficiencies. No gray spectrum between the lines.

A mother will not deign to bear the truth to her child that with saving a soul, there comes often the destruction of yet another. And with it, the heavy burden to tow through life’s journey ere long.

Pure selflessness and the love for your people will yet drive you forward, until the final infernal nail is struck into your blood-soaked coffin, until there is nothing more.

It is in these private moments that you crumble under the mere pressure of it all, for it is truly too much to bear, ever so more as the glorified Warrior of Darkness. It is quite difficult to fathom, how you could bring about twilight into a world that had been sullied by festering light for ages. And with the fleeting passage of time since you began your work in Norvrandt, your blossoming fame has been far exceeding your expectations.

It feels much like your budding adventuring days in Eorzea with the Scions, fighting stalwart against dreadful primals and garnering the unadulterated adoration and hope of everyone around you. It feels just like that, only ten-fold with everything on your shoulders in a foreign land full of sin eaters—you the only one to be able to thwart and effectively contain the light that ravages the landscape.

How many are depending on you and, truthfully, _only_ _you_ to see it through to the end? As you their savior, while to some their _god_. What will come of it all, you cannot fathom. And still there is yet much suffering on the Source.

There is no end to this. And you are so very tired.

A cool errant breeze softly caresses you, a wisp faintly brushing past your cheek and making you vaguely aware of the warm moisture that had streamed past your skin there. Then a deep sigh resounds from your lips, the crushing weight of your current mission surging to the forefront of your mind.

Perhaps it is futile to dream of a normal life at all.

You are full aware that you have been quite literally killing yourself with this cursed light. You, the only one who could handle_ that_ burden. It courses and crackles through your veins like a noxious poison.

‘Tis a relief that the pain is still yet dull enough to hide from your companions. Only in the times that you feel that you are alone, though you know ultimately you are being watched, would you allow yourself to knit your brow and grind down your teeth from the sheer burn of it. In truth, you can only but accept the fact that your worsening affliction is no secret to a few.

Ardbert has an inkling of your situation because it felt quite pointless to hide it from him, as he feels very much like an old friend you could confide in and… well, no reason in keeping a secret from a ghost of a fallen man of whom only you could see and communicate with.

You suppose you would not have been able to withhold much from him at any rate, given his predilection to random appearances in your private chambers.

Fool would it be to begin to think that anything is concealed from the Exarch, for he observes your every move. Mayhap it is only a matter of time before he will confront you about it.

You ponder on why he had not done so already. It is unsettling, just as were his unsavory methods of delivering you and your comrades to the First.

With all that being said, you still find that you cling to him for hope, albeit as foolish as it may sound. After all, the Exarch had been the first to hoist you up on the pedestal, to make you stand tall as the hero in this decaying world.

And it is most certain that Y’shtola and Urianger already behold the fetid light within you for what it is, seething and destroying your soul before their shrewd eyes. You could gather as much from the accidental eavesdropping you had committed some days past.

But why not be up front about it and speak plainly, instead of secrets? You immediately clutch onto the notion that it is to protect you, to keep you grounded instead of alarming you when all knew that so much already weighed on your success in containing the light. You have so much pressure on you, so why would they throw in the fact that you were actively tearing your soul asunder in your selfless endeavor?

No one says a word while you mull about in the chaos of your current reality, the others seemingly oblivious to the damage the light inflicts upon your soul. They know what they ask of you and continue to let it be—as if to wield you as a handy sharpened blade, as a means to an end.

How has it gone on this far, you consider. At what point is it asking too much, even for _you_?

Your enduring love for your friends and all the innocent lives you had acquainted yourself with over the hastening years… _that_ is why you yet still fight, and all in the name of Hydaelyn.

For all the obvious reasons—motives which can become as shallow as a water puddle in a rainstorm when incessantly wrought with a tempest’s deluge of pain and sacrifice.

On the more challenging days, sometimes it is difficult to not feel how you have come out at a disadvantage as a sacrificial lamb for them all, for Her. A primal no less, you have recently learned through _him_, the Ascian.

Part of you had wanted to immediately refute it for nonsense as soon as you heard the words spill from his lips, but you feel that you could never do such a thing. Rather, it feels very much like a missing puzzle piece that you had long been searching for, only to discover it placed carefully right beneath your nose.

You sense another presence upon you in this moment of silent reverie, aetherial senses tingling as though like static electricity spindling down your fingertips. Your lips part open marginally with a trace of apprehension, throat tensing and heart thudding to your gut. Your eyes remain shut while your arms hang freely at your sides, soft leather-clad fingers twitching and tensing in their attempt to feel your surroundings for who interrupted your intimate musings.

How unfortunate for you, as there is nothing to grasp a hold to. As if there is a void of sinuous shadow blocking you from perceiving who or what or _where_ it is. Even _more_ unfortunate is the fact that you are without your weapon. In your listless and fatigued state when you first shuffled to the water’s edge, you had haphazardly tossed it aside at the base of a nearby tree. Far be it from your reach.

You, of course, had been in more compromising positions. With the pain, you could relish in your bones the intensity of light that you had absorbed from your most recent conquest in the Qitana Ravel, from the lightwarden Eros.

A quivering breath exhales from your lips as you endeavor to hone in on that newfound potential, recklessly and quite desperately ready to abuse its tainted strength, along with the immeasurable power you already harnessed through Hydaelyn, to defend yourself if need be.

A silly and utterly daft notion it is, indeed.

You immediately feel a sharp, clawing ache in your chest and gasp from the shock of it gripping onto the fabric of your being. You clumsily stumble onto your hands and knees, splashing into the muddied waters.

It is nothing short of an otherworldly experience, as if it has detached soul from flesh and you are helpless to do anything to thwart its power.

You are on fire, as you feel torrid light ripping its way through your vasculature, ruthlessly scorching everything in its wake. Your head is splitting with an intensity you have yet to ever feel, eyes eclipsing over in obsidian as you blindly look to the heavens again, long hair a wild tempest of silk in the starlight.

Flashes of carnage and ruination flood through your mind, bleeding through your very soul and you feel as though you are peering through someone else’s eyes for a split second.

And as quick as it is there, it is gone.

The bitter taste of copper fills your mouth as you realize that you have gnawed most harshly at your bottom lip. Your vision sharpens and you find that you are gazing at the night sky again, breathing heavily from the throes of receding agony and trying to fathom just what in the _hells_ just happened. Fine rivulets of water trickle past your hypersensitive skin, glistening by the stars that echo the raging light that is once again held fast from within.

Is it not too early for all of this? An edge of panic takes a ferocious hold on you for an instant as thoughts of inadequacy creep in.

_You have to endure, **must **endure, for them, for everyone, for Hydaelyn. It is much too soon. So much more to do…_

Gradually, after some time, you lean back on the heels of your boots into a squatting position, hands on bare thighs and numbly you realize that you are still not alone.

You hear a deep chuckle behind you, its oddly familiar sound reverberating through the wooded scape, taunting you so.

“Feeling a tad under the weather, hero?” a voice calls out to you, its intonation most melodic and dulcet.

Quickly, you stagger to pull yourself up from the mud, a look of disdain apparent on your countenance as you unsuccessfully attempt to shake the soggy mire from your gloves.

You turn about to see Emet-Selch leaning with leisure against the tree where your weapon lays, arms crossed and shoulders heavily hunched. He has a most wicked smile on his dark lips, gold irises glinting in the nightfall as he peers out at your form.

_As if I need this right now_, you scowl to yourself.

Absentmindedly, you run your tongue across your lip where blood is pooling on the soft, broken flesh.

But of course, you would be lying to yourself if you do not acknowledge how your breath is seized in your throat and your heart is thundering in your breast, just at the mere sight of him.

All your senses are on edge as you contemplate why he is here, at this hour with you, alone. And he had certainly witnessed what had occurred, that shameful moment of weakness that brought you to your knees.

Would he use it against you somehow? You feel you have never known how to read him, convinced that you could never put trust in him.

The refreshing cool air of the night now all at once feels terribly humid and smothers you as you try to play it off like he does not affect you so. You carefully step your boots out of the swamp onto the root and leaf-ridden terrain, scarcely able to hold his heavy gaze.

Feeling the uncomfortable pull of water-logged leather on your hands, you fidget to unceremoniously strip your gloves off and toss them onto the ground by your feet. It honestly really pisses you off, how you realize in this moment just how helplessly drawn to him you are.

Your thoughts drift to the murals in the cave and his words when you last saw him.

_Wouldn’t you wish for the same?_

You hate yourself for feeling empathy for him. You should extinguish the mere thought of it, just as you are sure that at least some of your companions are doing at this moment as they carouse and celebrate victory_, your_ victory.

You know you shouldn’t be so vested in knowing more of him. And you shouldn’t steal glances at him from afar, when you suspected no one else was watching. You shouldn’t want anything from him at all.

It is evident that he is aware of your curiosity, which doesn’t bode very well for you both. The more you learn of him and his strife, the more you feel tethered to him somehow.

It makes you sick, the thought of it all. He is your ultimate enemy, a child of Zodiark, end of story.

If only.


	2. Embers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the tags/warnings. Rating to adjust in future.

You remain stoic as you look back at Emet-Selch, or at the very least you should like to think so.

You feel his darkened eyes drag slowly up and down your form from his place against the tree, your ears prickling with unbearable heat due to your now embarrassing disheveled state of dress before him. But what he sees from the shadows, he makes painfully evident in his intense stare that he _appreciates_.

Woe it is that you had not thought to bring a prism so you could at least dispel your glamour and don your genuine, more reserved garb.

Distractingly, you realize that your thin, dampened tunic is clinging about the swelling of your breasts in the most uncomfortable fashion. The highly cropped shorts snugging against your skin are in no better shape, riding scandalously up the cleft between your thighs.

Because of the stifling heat of the light that burdens you, that is why you have been dressing so provocatively since you began absorbing the Lightwardens. It is not really _all _for attention, although you are grounded enough to discern that some of it is—that you do enjoy flaunting yourself, if only just a little.

You so desperately want to adjust yourself but are unable to under his burning gaze.

You want to run your tongue over your throbbing bottom lip again. You can feel the warmth of blood bead to the skin’s surface as you become so hotly flustered from his close study of you. Your thick, long hair is dampened to the back of your neck and you become inflamed with yourself that you had not chosen to wear it up today. Oh, how you wish you could pull it back from your feverish skin, to offer you some respite from the blaze.

But you cannot, for you are shackled in place by the invading aberrant thoughts that race through your mind, unsure of your every movement before him.

The Ascian’s deviant smile does not relent as he lifts one arm to prop his right elbow upon his left wrist, holding his amber eyes to your own as he places a silken-clad finger to his chin—as if in mock deliberation.

“The light within you burns so _very_ brightly, my dear hero, “ he purrs, smoothly pushing himself from the tree trunk and taking a soft step in your direction, shoulders still slumped over.

As Emet-Selch saunters forward, you vaguely note how he is now positioned just perfectly so between you and your spurned weapon.

“Why, it practically _illuminates_ the very muck of this rotten swamp upon your person. Pray tell, is it a favorite pastime of yours to bathe in filth?” he chides with his typical lilting voice, white teeth impossibly shining in the night as his grin morphs into a pompous laughter, all theatrics.

You bristle only slightly at his words, rolling your eyes in an effort to deflect. He does love to tease you so.

Crossing your arms about your chest, you carelessly press your breasts together in a most appealing visage to the former Garlean emperor. You are stupidly unaware of what you are doing until you catch his inquisitive eyes flit down and then back upwards to your face again, an eyebrow decidedly quirked up in interest. Quickly, you drop your arms and internally curse yourself for the slip-up.

As if you aren’t already discomfited enough at this point, his hooded gaze begins to focus on your bloodied lip as his mouth parts open in a manner that makes your cheeks flush and your thighs beg to clench.

It is not the first time you had felt his acute and often indecent observation. It dates back to when you first met him in the Crystarium. The way he looked at you, the reserved and implicit hunger there, engulfed in gold. You had wondered if the others noticed. It would come off as brutish from any other, but strangely not so from him. You secretly revel in it.

“Aye, well a little bit of mud never hurt anyone, did it?” you interject, stretching out your bare arm and brushing off a smudge of dirt. “You would do well to get your hands dirty every now and then.”

Even as the words fall from your lips, you mentally berate yourself for them.

Emet-Selch’s eyes cast off into the distance of the forest for a moment, a flicker of a different type of smile touching his dark lips as he appears to be thinking back on something.

It is as if his mask has lifted during that time, and you desperately want to _know_. You give your best attempt to _not_ appear anxious as he meets your eyes again, that depraved smirk back in place.

“Ah, well it has been quite some time, yes. I do not suppose you could show me how?”

The open-endedness of the question strikes you silent, wishing you had just walked away as soon as you first saw him.

Although you hadn’t much time for yourself over the long years, you had indulged in a meaningless tryst here and there, when the opportunity arose and you were open to it. It certainly was not very often, especially since you had traversed worlds to arrive here in the First. You are simply too busy for such a triviality and, despite your vaunted fame as a warrior, you often sequestered yourself from that perk of the job. It is better that way, to avoid emotional conflict.

Upon further thought, perhaps you had bottled up your needs a little too much as of late. That fact you are painfully aware of as you suffer under this grating magnetism you feel towards the Ascian. It truthfully must have been much too long, given the outright absurdity of this situation.

Truth be told, it seems to venture beyond the flesh—this fascination. It would be far easier if it ended with mere lust. Rather, it feels as if he is supposed to mean something to you, _be_ something to you. A most disturbing notion worming its way at the back of your skull, its rationale lost to oblivion. It has been keeping you sleepless and on edge ever since you had first locked eyes with him.

And it certainly does not help that you find him dreadfully charming.

His own intentions have been inexplicable. He makes it clear his physical attraction to you, but to what end?

You two are the most extreme diametric forces of good and evil—of Hydaelyn and of Zodiark—though somehow you are not entirely sure about how good or how evil either of them are, most especially after that history lesson in the Ravel.

Notwithstanding, it should be more unambiguous, as you the Warrior of Light from the Source and of Darkness from the First have ever been a thorn thrust deep into his side. Yet, ever since you met Emet-Selch, he has done nothing but vex you with whimsical banter and veiled sensuous scrutiny, nothing to resemble a true hostility.

As he had proclaimed to you and all your companions—cooperation is what he seeks. So unlike any adversary you have encountered, it all runs so deeply convoluted. He makes you _care_ after him the more you learn of him, more so than the desire to exterminate him as you had done with Lahabrea and others of his kind.

And he had saved Y’shtola, near effortlessly plucking her from the Lifestream with the literal snap of a finger when all seemed lost—what appeared to be the simplest act by him that you can scarcely wrap your mind around, the sheer idea of it, the blurring between what makes him diabolical versus honorable.

As he had claimed, it was an act of good faith. But does he realize what he had done? How much ease he had done it with and how it made your heart swell in gratitude and _ardor_, although you prefer he not know of the latter.

In truth, you had speculated if he had even needed that blasted lamp, or if it was all just a silly con to goad you on, whistling like a buffoon into the forest. Although, tricks aside, he seems at times so very sincere with his intentions, once you look past the scorned scarlet glyph and his ill intentions with the Rejoining.

Is it just an elaborate ruse to strike down your guard and slay you mercilessly when you are at your weakest? This, after all, seems so very much more likely the case rather than a partnership of the most unlikely sort.

Your thoughts drift this way and that, nearly all the time about the man, often finding it difficult to keep up with him and frequently overlooking the villain that he is supposed to represent. He challenges you in a much different sense than what you are used to, and you have always lunged headlong at the thought of a good challenge—much to your chagrin at this precise moment.

“Ever so restrained and cold you are,” he murmurs almost like a paramour as he further closes the distance between you both. You have to scoff at the wayward nature of that remark.

“That all sounds a bit strange coming from someone such as the likes of _you_,” you bite back, perhaps too scornful, placing a hand to your hip and vaguely taking note of the height disparity between you and him.

He stands a couple ilms taller, slouched as he is. This is a finding which alarmingly excites you as your frame had often dwarfed many of those around you, with the exception of Urianger of course.

Emet-Selch huffs in response, a peculiar look in his brilliant eyes. “You cast your judgment far too rashly, hero. I had thought you to be above such banal ruminations. Have I not been virtuous enough for you?”

He is no longer smiling and is looking at you for a reply, but you struggle to form one. He is now only a few fulms away and, you think to yourself, he has breached past the distance that he had always so carefully kept since you’d first met.

“You are ever so determined to cast my lot aside as mere storybook villains. Have you not given a second thought as to how _we_ would view _you_, o’ great slayer of Ascians? Or, for that matter, how any of whom you have slain in the name of your great _Mother_? How they would perceive of your swift verdict?” he grills you as he advances ever closer, rancor dripping from the name of your deity and you find yourself very much disturbed by his line of questioning.

You can feel the frustration in his argument and it gives you great pause. Your eyes fall away from his, becoming lost in reflection.

There is little to argue. With nary a thought and with such great efficacy, you had slain your foes who had opposed Hydaelyn’s will—one after the other. Ultimately, it was for the greater good, to save others—you feel you know this... That was the fact that has kept you numb and blind in your actions, no matter how murderous. However, with your hands bathed in the blood of legions, whether judged as good or evil, you can acutely feel the buried guilt and attrition in that. Always have.

Drowning in your thoughts, you do not even think for a rebuttal—to ask him how is he any better, for all the souls he had reaped over his moth-eaten, bygone years. Many of them were no doubt faultless and naïve to the bigger game that he played—for Zodiark’s will, for _his_ people.

Not much different than you. And you all but know that in all your struggles as a devoted warrior to the cause, you had inevitably slain innocents along the way. If not by blade, then certainly by circumstance.

Silently gauging your noticeably despondent countenance, the Ascian chooses to soften his next words.

“It does get so very wearisome, does it not? Everyone relying on you for support, always biting off more than you can chew. Yet you have to keep up the good fight, for no one else will do it for you.” His tone is morose and sympathetic, teetering on patronizing.

Even so, it strikes its chord.

Your eyes involuntarily meet his again, all at once feeling like you have been read like a book. Is it just that you are that easy? Or is it rather that he is just that good?

You ponder this but for a moment, before it soon vanishes from your mind.

He suddenly steps forward into your space, peering down at you as he pulls the white, silken glove from his right hand in a most slow and purposeful manner.

Next best thing would have been to use his teeth, the sudden debauched thought flashes through your mind and you feel your face flush hotly in humiliation.

Your nostrils flare inadvertently as you sharply inhale your breath, the surprising warmth radiating from his presence so close to you and his intoxicating scent filling your lungs. Something of spices, leather and the woods, you feel you cannot get enough of it—so much so that you faintly feel like you have drifted into him and have to right your footing to keep yourself at bay. The prior discomfort from your sodden, flimsy clothing is supremely heightened by his proximity, you all at once wanting nothing more than to shamelessly strip yourself bare before him at this point.

Hydaelyn, help you. Your resolve is fast fading. You would soon be lost at this rate.

_How is he so warm?_

What has gotten into you? Why are you letting him in, this _Ascian_? Has it really been so long since you felt the touch of another that you would fling yourself into the arms of the enemy? He is manipulating you, using you like all the others. He doesn’t care for any of your plights in in your fleeting, empty existence. He is no good. He will destroy you and all you love.

Just as he and his kind have done for eons before you, before anything you have come to know. An ancient evil.

But these thoughts of clarity breathe life and then wither away with Him_. In _Him.

Just a meager number of ilms, that is the space between you—as close as it has ever been. So close that your scant breaths just barely intermingle with his and you silently struggle with yourself to raise your chin and meet him in the eye.

_Why is he even breathing?_

He smiles rather coquettishly and leans further into you, leading the motion with his chiseled jaw as he locks his focus to your lips. Lavish, sable robes tickle along the exposed skin of your knees, the glimmer from his pearl earring striking into your vision.

You are frozen in the same stance as before, right hand on hip as your left dangles freely at your side. A sharp gasp escapes you when his index finger lightly grazes the soft flesh of the palm on your free hand, the naked warmth of his skin electrifying your senses, your aether.

Your stance loosens under his spell rather than recoiling and you feel like you don’t know how to handle yourself, praying that that he cannot tell you are all but trembling. Alas, your eyes likely give you all away—you meekly note to yourself how exceedingly difficult it is to keep them open as if in a haze.

Feeling rather helpless as you stand there in a ridiculous stupor, you softly arch your brow in heady disorientation as he smoothly lifts his hand to gently skim his bare thumb past your bruised and broken bottom lip. You flinch from the motion and the realization strikes that you had long forgotten that you had bitten it earlier, eyelids aflutter and when you feel his touch, a scorching heat surges straight to your core. A faint tingling sensation trails on the sensitive skin from the action and then nothing.

A breath hisses from between your lips that you had not realized you were holding. Your now seemingly _very dry_ mouth parts open in shock and it is as if all the sound of the Rak‘tika has gone deaf silent, wide eyes glued to he alone. Your heart is hammering near painful in your chest; paired with the quickening throbs of discomfort from the consumed light, you have to focus on your breathing to prevent collapsing into his chest.

Still he does not look into your eyes, his concentration solely on your lip as he looms over you, his presence devouring.

You can make out the pores of his skin, smooth and fair like marble—jawline and cheekbones chiseled and sanded down to precision. His elegant, dark eyebrows with fine hairs strewn into a sharpened arch, all to frame a third eye which softly shines by the stars. His regal nose perfectly sculpted against the deep vermilion lips of a most divine mouth.

For how he has leaned over your form, you note how his rich, mahogany hair with its stroke of pure white falls into you. A lock of its silken strands hangs over his right eye, and you now see how thick and black his lashes are in contrast.

Your steady headlong stare locks in place here and he breaks his focus from your lip to bear his pale golden eyes into your own, like two shards of Tiger’s eye gleaming.

This close, you can better take note of the lack of pallor to the delicate skin under his eyes, ages of unknown history albeit sorrow written there. Something intangible and arcane icily flickers within your aether, as you realize he is reaching out to you with his own. It all feels so profoundly intimate.

_Who is he?_

It is as if you are underwater, stripped from your ability to breathe under its depths. Your chin tilts and twists in anticipation while you numbly watch as he takes the pad of his thumb to his mouth and lightly sucks the blood there—your blood—his tongue just barely visible behind lips, tasting and savoring in it.

In his eyes, an open invitation.

It takes a tremendous force of willpower to keep your knees from buckling, all the world lost to you, all rights and wrongs banished as you struggle to not have him right then and there in the woods. Push him to the cool earth and wrap your body around his like a serpent, to relish in his sinful touch.

But you are grounded enough to realize that this outright lust is just the byproduct of something _more_, something archaic and infuriatingly out of reach. You dare not touch, for fear of what comes after.

Against your better judgment, you ease your tongue out to graze your lip and note that the pain is gone and, for that matter, the skin is smooth and unbroken as if…

“Y-you… healed me?” The question tumbles from your lips, the deep husky tone of your voice most disconcerting.

No doubt, you appear confounded as you stumble back, suddenly needing space from the Ascian. Unbidden tears sting your eyes as some unchecked, ineffable emotion sweeps through you. 

Emet-Selch daintily pulls his glove back on, a smirk to his lips as if reveling in some private joke. He looks back up to you and his golden eyes inundate you in fervor ever so more as he arches his eyebrows, tilts his refined chin downwards and shrugs his broad shoulders with a profligate charm.

“But you really should be more careful with that light, you know. You’d do well to not provoke it so, lest you allow it to swallow you whole,” he enunciates the last words with a certain finality that sends a shiver down your spine.

“W-wh…” your voice dies in your throat as you take your finger to prod at your lip, utterly perplexed that he would do such a thing, even after Y’shtola.

Immediately, a veil of boredom casts upon Emet-Selch's features. “_Well_, this is lovely and all that, but I really must be on my way.”

With a most elegant bow and arms raised at his sides in resplendent flourish, the Ascian turns and dark plumes of arcane energy spawn out of thin air just a few fulms away. He steps towards it with a slight swagger to his gait, which you cannot help but admire.

Just before he reaches the portal, his right hand raises high and a jolting snap echoes through the quiet night air.

Your once dampened clothing is now dry and freshly laundered, bringing you immediate comfort. Crisp gloves back in place as you gaze silently at his receding form.

“Do try to stay out of trouble, dear hero, “ he murmurs almost under his breath, never looking back and disappearing into the void. You are alone again.

A moment of resurgence is much needed as you stare blankly to the dead space of where he evanesced into the shadows. You sigh deeply, shaking your head in pure exasperation as you begin to trudge up to where your weapon still lay.

Once within an arm’s distance to the lone, gnarled tree, you brace your hands upon its weathered bark to hang your head down in contemplation, and to allow your heart to return to its natural pace.

You would have to do better next time, a vow you make at once. Emet-Selch could not have the upper hand.

After some time, you decide to make the trek back to Fanow. Your chest and head ache with every step taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although the WoL is ambiguous, you will see references that suggest she is taller. Hope this doesn't mess with anyone's immersion. ;D


	3. Pendulum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note edited tags. Rating to change in next chapter...

You stare at the towering, vaulted ceiling of your inn room within the Pendants, eyes languidly training along the dark metal support beams encased within ruddy brick and mortar. Unable to settle your thoughts enough to succumb to sleep, you have been lying uselessly in bed—waging the war within your head to cease all thought of the Ascian. Time had slipped through your fingers much like the abrasive sands of the desert from which you had recently roamed.

Heaving out a deep sigh, you lift your fatigued body from the sheets and peer out towards the open window. The stars twinkle serenely in the swathing of blackened sky, tiny motes of brilliance fading into the periphery. Shaking off the troubling reverie that has been haunting you as of late, you attempt to settle your mind on something less harmful and nefarious.

After a few moments, a smile touches faintly on your lips as you remember the words of the Exarch from earlier.

_Even if I had my pick of every reflection’s heroes, I could not have asked for a finer champion._

You could sense, even whilst concealed beneath the trappings of his protective cowl, that he was riddled with nerves before you. He had fought so hard to appear composed, vowing to assuage your pain and, all the while, urging you to press on.

How you had wanted in that moment to pull his hood away so you could look upon his face, his eyes—to understand who he was, why he had so much faith in you, why he trembled ever so repressed in your presence that you could barely make out the slight swell in his aether.

You wanted to ask, but the cowl had its efficacies of keeping you at a measured distance. So you did not.

The breeze blowing in is balmy and feels refreshing to your heated flesh, the bursting light beneath your skin near blistering your viscera. You don only your flimsy smallclothes and yet even they are stifling to you within the bounds of this room. Quickly, you climb out of bed and head for your armoire.

Despite Y’shtola’s most adamant wish for you to rest after conquering Storge, you cannot sit idle in this, what feels like a damnable prison to your senses. You must break free, to remain sane enough to lull your focus from the intense suffering that plagues you.

Softly your eyelids fall closed as you gather the anima within your being, your aether feathering and streaming from tissue and bone. Fixating your mind in on your destined aetherial beacon, you allow your body and soul to melt into the Lifestream and usher you into Twine, the quaint township nestled within the Central Hills of Amber.

The gentle rush of cool air flows past your skin after your body reforms itself and you note how quiet it is, how desolate. Grasping your chocobo whistle in hand, you summon your beloved comrade to whisk you away into the night sky, just recently laid bare after a hundred years of brazen effulgence.

There you fly for some time, to feel the exhilaration of the dry winds across your flesh and steal the breath from your lungs. It is not until the sun begins to rise, the first true dawn touching this part of the First in ages, that you choose to allow your chocobo some rest.

Scouting a lonely crag of rock that offers a decent vista of the barren lands of Amh Araeng, you settle down your companion to the bluff. You let him wander off while you step out to the far reaches of the steep drop, arms wound tightly around your chest. The relentless ache ripples and spasms in your breast, a poignant reminder of your fate.

You will be meeting in the Ocular today with the others, before setting off to Kholusia and there shall you find whether or not this has been a meaningless endeavor. There is only one Lightwarden remaining and you are nigh upon the terminus of what your soul can withstand.

With Minfilia no more, Ryne is now ever perceptive of you just as the former had been. While now it is only plain for all to see that you are bearing through the overwhelming amount of light within you, she can behold how it wreaks destruction to your soul, fraying and undoing you with every minute of every hour. Yet she had said herself that she could not save you but only stave it off until the inevitable.

There is no saving you, for it is all beyond that. You could only press forward, no matter the pain and no matter the cost.

Your thoughts drift to Ardbert as you contemplate the state of your impending doom, or at least that is what it has often been beginning to feel like. Perhaps he still yet has a role in this somehow, even while he insists that he is without significance in this endeavor of yours.

When he reached for you earlier in your quarters, as you crumpled to the floor in blinding anguish, you had felt something indescribable, something like a soothing balm at his ghostly touch. It had to mean something.

Daybreak casts a myriad of colors that wash the skies aloft, its iridescence irrefutably dazzling. So engrossed you are with this spectacle of light that you do not notice the expanse of shadow enveloping the space around you.

“Brooding again, are we?” you hear an accustomed voice tease, now all at once impulsively titillating to your ears.

You lurch at the sound and your balance falters, no thanks to the stacked heel of your knee-high boots. Attempting to catch your fall by bracing your arms at the imminent impact, you quickly realize that you may have ambled a little too far by the edge of the precipice. Your heart sinks and you feel your body waft on empty air, eyes shut tight to your most unfortunate, harebrained demise.

However, instead of falling to your untimely death, you fall into something altogether warm and yielding. As you are flailing forward, a steady force catches you at your ribs a bit painfully so, just beneath your breast. Gasping at the shock of it, you feel something grip at your shoulder, flipping you so that you are cradled bridal-style. Warmth hooks under and encircles your bare knees.

Your pulse profusely racing and body shuddering from the panic of what had just occurred, you find yourself instinctively wrapping your arms firmly around a large set of shoulders and burrowing your face into the softest of hair. The arms about you tense up so tightly, causing your eyes to spring open and you to pull back from the embrace.

Those eyes again, searing into you as you feel your breath catch in your lungs.

Emet-Selch has the most honestly astonished and pained look upon his face, nostrils flaring and mouth slightly open in something of a stupor. You can spot a delicate wrinkle etched beneath his third eye from the knit in his refined eyebrows. His dark hair is slightly mussed and blows gently about with the arid winds, bequeathing him with a near boyish charm.

The rising dawn casts a halo of light about his flaring tresses and he looks, in that moment, very much like some sort of angel that had just saved you.

As you deliberately search his face, still reeling from this bizarre chain of events, you note how your holds on one another do not slacken, even though they likely should have done so by now. An overwhelming rush of relief floods your senses.

You find that you had missed him during the time that you and your party were adventuring in the desert, his absence leaving you yearning against your better judgment. It is difficult to fight back against the elation of seeing him again.

As your senses start to calm, you become bewildered at how it feels as if you and he are floating on air.

“What in the seven fucking hells—“ you choke out as you look and realize that you are _indeed_ floating in the air.

Emet-Selch has you suspended in his arms, nigh a yalm or so off from the steep bluff, below you the eerie chasm that nearly ended it all. The mere sight of its depths has you clinging onto him again, oblivious to the fact that your cheek is nearly flush with his lips as you gawk down into oblivion.

Always a weakness of yours, this absurd fear of heights.

You could test your limits all you cared but you would never cease to allow it to take a hold of you from time to time, usually when caught off-guard. You had bested the fiercest of primals, fought the bloodiest of battles, and faced death in all its devastation—yet still you would succumb to this triviality.

You feel the embrace around you gather steadfast as you shake from the dread that orbits your being, gripping ever more snugly and offering you comfort.

Never had you felt such a thing, this sense of belonging and all whilst in _his_ arms. It arrests you entirely. No matter that he is your sworn enemy and the crippling tragedy that waits, should you choose the path that is inexorably laid bare before your eyes. 

As Emet-Selch begins to drift back over the rocky crag, the movement incites you to slowly snap out of your trance and unwittingly turn your head back to him. From the angle that you are held, your mouth fortuitously grazes first over the cool, smooth skin of his nose. Then, as you sink into his arms when acute alacrity strikes, you allow your lips to drag down and softly brush past his, catching ever so gingerly—so very chaste and barely there at all.

It is more than enough to light you on fire to his touch.

You do not even think it through before you act, for it all feels profoundly natural. Your eyes are blown open wide to attest to his reaction, feeling the light heat of his breath fan across your lips.

The once-cold adornments of his robed finery pressing into your flesh feel as if they are now branding you. His embrace around your body feels like a sweltering sauna; while executed with the most noble of intentions, it is now exceedingly arousing—gloved fingers of one hand grasped onto the bare skin above your knee, the other hand clutched against your ribs and so dangerously close to your breast.

He has noticeably stiffened against your own heat and the faintest noise is pulled from the back of his throat, an almost strangled sigh. His gilded irises peer into you, _through_ you in their blaze. And you can very nearly feel some measure of hesitation billowing from him, the pained expression on his countenance spurring an influx of nameless feelings through you that one could not hope to unravel.

Then—weightlessness.

Suddenly, you are dropped quite indecorously to the ground, backside crashing into the hard and dry soil in a flurry of grit and dust. The shock of it beckons a pitiful, stricken cry from you as you feel the pain spread over from the impact. Having only fallen from half a dozen or so fulms felt to be much more, your ego likely more so bruised than your spine.

“How do you hapless shards bumble about in your fruitless existence?” Emet-Selch mutters tiredly, arms crossing about his chest and shaking his head in a play of exasperation, poised on the open air as if on a theater’s stage before you. He appears quite unaffected and he makes you feel like an idiot.

It is all a bit disheartening and confusing but you swallow down the puerile tears that threaten to break to the surface. Because you know he is deflecting, it is palpable.

“You would deny it? I know you can feel it too.” You blurt the words out as you lift yourself from the dirt and raise your emboldened gaze to meet his. “There is something between us.” This last bit comes out so softly that you feel it must have been carried off in the wind.

Nevertheless, you have laid your intent bare. It is foolish and selfish but you cannot be bothered to care about it right now. You want to see how far this would take you, regardless of its ramifications.

You could never have strayed farther from your path than at this moment.

An eyebrow twitches up and, it may be that your eyes are playing tricks, but you think you can make out the whisper of a tremble from him, his pale skin blanching all the more at your words. This serves to fuel your fortitude, and you try your best to appear as nonchalant as possible as you shake the parched sands from your body.

It is more difficult to brush off the derision the Ascian had served you, the insecurities it stirred.

“I know you have interest. You always seek me out and you… seem to want something from me.” The last words spill forth from your lips in nigh a question, nerves on edge and you are screaming at yourself in your head.

It suddenly feels all so absurd. Where is this going to get you? This meddling with the enemy is sure to only take you in deep, far beyond what you can frankly grasp.

Emet-Selch masks his face over with indifference, a touch of a lifeless smirk about his lips. Dropping himself to the ground with finesse, he slowly straightens his posture and steps towards you.

He towers over your form, appearing every bit unimpressed with your candor and exuding consummate dominance. Before, in the Greatwood, you had been quite pleased with his height when he stood lazily slouched. Now, he looks ever more threatening as you steel yourself, hand at weapon if the situation were to go south.

The Ascian can sense your rising tension, his smile ever-widening as he lifts the ornately clothed arm of his rich robes to snap his gloved fingers. It takes but a few seconds for you to register in your muddled thoughts what he has done, your hand fumbling onto _nothing_ where your weapon had originally been.

A sharp breath escapes your lips, parted in faint horror as you begin to understand that you may have made a small mistake in poking the bear, per se.

“Whatever would make you think I would be interested in someone such as _you_? I could snap your bones as I snap my fingers, girl,“ his voice tremors low and carnal to your ears, the gold heat in his eyes catching the dawn’s luster.

You shudder as you right your stance and maddeningly attempt to sort out the odd arousal that is blossoming wildly from within, from this sudden hostility no less. For some reason, you genuinely want to provoke him—to capture a glimpse of that rage. As imprudent as it is, that notion falls silent to you.

After all, healing you was one thing, albeit mind-blowing when coming from _him_. However, saving you… Emet-Selch, Ascian—savior of Hydaelyn’s Warrior of Light. Clearly_, that_ is something else.

“Why ever do I get the feeling that you wouldn’t so much as harm a hair on my head?” you quip back in a mocking tone, managing a complacent smile and meeting his eyes with resolve. “I am not afraid of you, Emet-Selch.”

The Ascian breathes out a chuckle, the mirth not quite reaching his eyes as he edges closer.

Like a viper, he lunges his hand out and seizes onto your neck. The fine, gentle silk of his gloves luridly contradicts the stunning, vehement force of his long fingers clutching painfully into your skin and airways, all too easily encircling your throat and giving you cause to wheeze for air.

You instinctively fight back, fingernails clawing at his powerful hold and, as your vision begins to cloud over, you feel him press into you and harshly shove you like a rag doll into a wall of sharp, jagged rock. His grip on you loosens upon the shock of the impact, allowing you to inhale a choked sob into your bruising windpipe.

“Oh dear, did I push a button?” you manage to murmur as you lean into the roughened stone, amusement coloring a voice already tainted with ragged breathing.

Your impertinence startles you even as you begin to chortle mindlessly at him, watching his posture tense and the ire seethe from him.

The Ascian takes his free hand to join the other, again tightening and holding steadfast into the tender flesh of your throat, forcing you to gaze into his eyes. Silently, he brings his lips to the slope of your neck, to where you could feel the torch of his breath against your clammy skin. Your heart lurches from the deed as he all but nuzzles you as a lover would.

“Do not flatter yourself all too much, dear _hero_. Now how would our little pact fare if I was to allow you to traipse off the cliff into the afterlife?” he rasps nigh sensuously into your ear.

Despite his embittered words, your whole body sways into him, a life of its own as you can barely contain the sudden need to ensnare this man between your thighs, to cage and conquer him as a beast.

The things he is doing to you, the depths he is driving you to—you are all but lost in this twisted game. A soft moan escapes you, struggling in his grip for dominance. Still, his hold on your neck squeezes dangerously so, perhaps all the more because of your reciprocation to his violence.

At once, as your lucidity wanes, the teeming, caustic light racks shamelessly through your body before your adversary. You feel his hands drop from your neck as you weave your fingers through your hair and cradle your skull, pulsating waves of blinding torture cascading upon you. Your knees buckle and you feel your body slump forward into Emet-Selch’s broad chest, numbly comprehending that his arms are now wound around your frame as the pain spikes savagely through your rib cage.

The now cool golden medal trimmings of his robes press softly into your cheek, offering an odd sort of calm to anchor yourself to as the light has its way. It bleeds through your lungs and a malicious coughing fit ensues, your fingers clenching tightly onto plush fabric and fur as tears spring forth from your eyes against the wretched effort of it all.

Here you are, you feel, at your lowest point. And you have no one to blame but yourself.

As your body convulses in agony from the very light that you so willingly and selflessly gorged yourself upon to save this collapsing, dying world, there is no one to chase you away from its dreaded clutches of madness and despair.

How disappointing it is, how quickly the _hero_ has fallen—to the unyielding Light, to this Ascian who embraces you as if you are his beloved in the first blush of day.

Even now as your soul is splitting from its seams in ruin, your eyes clouding over in deep darkness, you can feel the tender caress of his bare fingers combing carefully through your hair. When he had stripped his gloves off, it is lost to you. His nimble fingers stroke your being into recognition, your heavy head hanging over his forearm to frantically search his face.

You can feel his dark aether reach out to you and you can nearly sense the shadow of stygian tendrils wafting about in the periphery. Gradually your vision clears and the pain recedes from your flesh and then your bones, as the tides ebb into the sea with the pull of the moon.

Hot tears are streaming from your eyes and it is useless to seek words to describe how he is making you feel. A hand shakily finds its way to his cheek, resting along his carved jawline as your gaze meets his own. The skin beneath your fingertips, so warm and soft.

“Who _are_ you?” you breathe out, the once illustrious strength that you were endowed with as the Warrior of Light—gone as dust in the biting winds of this barren wasteland.

Realization strikes you with a sudden clarity. You cling to your foe and its abhorrent shame bubbles forth as bile in your throat.

Have you already forgotten your mission so swiftly? Hydaelyn would see fit to forsake you. And what would your comrades think of you now? How many innocent lives had this man snuffed out, and would continue to massacre, if you were to continue down this path of your undoing?

But then you realize, with only the barest hint of cogitation, that you may have already abandoned your course long ago.

His crimson lips part open, and he swallows slowly with some sign of struggle as if his own mouth is as dry as your own, Adam’s apple bobbing and pulling against the pale flesh of his throat. You feel his arms shift about you as he gently takes your wrist in his hand, lifting it above your head and pinning it to the grating stone behind you. Your breath hitches in your breast as your other wrist is restrained in a similar fashion.

It feels so very delicate in its movement, almost choreographed, his cool amber eyes piercing through you all the while. However saccharine and mellow the dance, you can taste the fear burrow its sickening claws into your marrow.

For you are naught but a butterfly in a menagerie, pinned to a board at the whim of the Architect.

As the wind billows past your fiery flesh, the faint awareness creeps in that you are wearing very little to hide from his eyes. It is unsettling to realize this now, after all that had transpired in this private meeting with the Ascian.

A simple black chemise and a much too short skirt—really, you do play the masterful part of a tease. This is becoming a habit you loathe to its core in this moment, bucking against his death grip on your wrists.

Renewed energy from your aether surges at your fingertips and you uselessly strain against his hold without a weapon to forge its strength through. You would not dare channel the spoiled light within you again, for what destruction it wrought upon you before.

Emet-Selch bears his weight onto your arms against the sharpened edges of mineral. It tears pitilessly at your skin and you have to wince from the sting of it crushing into the sinew beneath.

He closes the little distance between you and breathes into the delicate shell of your ear, “My dear hero, you send me such mixed signals. Whatever is it that _you_ seek?”

The heat of his breath tickling at your skin and the feeling of his hardened body pressed into yours all but makes you feel like shapeless clay in his hands.

You cannot think, you cannot fight back any longer.

You sense his face tick back ever so slowly, his pained gaze fixated on your bare collarbone and it is unmistakable that his own breathing is labored. Every bit as affected as you. Instead of granting him a reply in speech, you allow yourself that bit of freedom from which you had always turned away.

It is but intemperance, unbidden.

Gently you nudge your nose to his cheek and throw the last vestiges of scruples out the door, appreciative that you are not too terribly short for his frame to be able to easily capture his lips to your own. A lance of desperation and need splices its way through you as your skin grazes past the supple flesh of his mouth, a hope burning from within that its fervor would be returned.

Emet-Selch freezes but for a few seconds, his own resolve seemingly crumbling away beneath your touch. You gasp into his mouth as he inhales sharply and all but swallows your breath away, pressing into the kiss with such urgency for you to fall into him like a withered flower petal.

A wanton groan rumbles from your throat, a mild ache flickering from his aggression just past. His hold is now wholly focused on your arms and wrists, bearing his full weight and more into you, broken flesh streaking rouged stains upon the piercing, coarse stone. It feels so exhilarating, pain intermingled with rapture. His fingers smoothly slide up your palm and entwine with your own trembling ones, still easily crushing away at your strength.

You feel his tongue trace lightly along the pout of your bottom lip, a silent plea that you so willingly and mindlessly oblige as you part your mouth against his. A muffled moan of his own erupts into you as your tongues caress and dance in a fevered, sizzling kiss that leaves you breathless, hung on his every whim for all you care.

His darkened aether swells and ghosts around you both, enveloping the space softly and reaching for purchase to your own. In contrast to the warmth of his body and the sheer heat of this union, it chills you in the most refreshing sense, cooling your blazing hot aether.

Had you not been teeming of this wicked light, perhaps it would have been bitingly painful. The lick of frost is razor-sharp, likening to that of holding a shard of ice against one’s skin for too long. But you find yourself pulling from his brace on you against the rock to get closer, to coil your arms around and fold into him. Alas, his hold does not yield but he does break from the kiss as you struggle beneath him, much to your distress.

You whimper softly, then loudly gasp and shudder as he dips his lips to your chin and edges down along your jawline in soft, open-mouthed kisses. He allows his teeth and tongue to drag over the sensitive skin, and it is becoming more difficult to breathe. Your body adjusts to his attentions as much as it can, craning your neck to the side to allow him better access.

When he reaches the curve of your mandible, at the juncture of your neck, his tongue laps tenderly at the flesh there just over your pulse. You heave into him at this, hooking your right leg with purpose around his form and pulling him flush against your body, no care for the fact that your skirt is now hiked up so precariously around your hips.

His dense, sumptuous robes cannot conceal his explicit hunger for you, the revelation of this finding sending a tremor down your spine and the instinct snaps through you to grind deliciously into him.

A sharp pinch into your skin on the column of your neck makes you cry out pitifully, Emet-Selch’s teeth sinking in most savagely with a hiss. Anxiety unfurls from the pit of your stomach, paired with exhilaration as you feel his grip loosen from your wrists.

But before you can reach for his face, an unseen force stonewalls your efforts, snaking about your hands and arms—pulling them from your body against the calcified rock, as if crucified.

You huff shamelessly in exasperation, desperation. If he would only just let you touch him.

A hot tickling sensation trails from your neck and it becomes evident to you that it is your own blood when he pulls himself away, his arms caged upon the wall on either side of your head. The scarlet substance traces lightly over his lips, parted open as his tongue eases out to lick and wet them, relishing in your taste.

It is so damned erotic, you feel like you have melted into a puddle at his feet. His breathing is erratic and strained, as if in a silent struggle while he looks down upon you. Such a forlorn expression darkens over his features as he scans his golden eyes over your face, searching—always searching for something.

“A ghost, a mere ghost,” he whispers into the breeze, so faint you can barely hear it. He looks lost and wistful in the moment, as if all the events leading up to this were already long forgotten.

Your breath catches tightly beneath your ribs at his words, an unnatural pang of grief lacing into your yearning for him. You do not understand what he means, and yet you do all the same. Just at the fringes of comprehension, but nothing more.

Haltingly, the Ascian scoops up your hair and brushes it to the side, eyes trained on the bloodied welt he has left on your neck. He dips his mouth to it and cool air flushes against the sensitive skin. It takes a couple of seconds for you to realize that he is blowing gently on your wound, nigh as a parent would do for their child’s scraped knee. A chuckle begs to escape from your lips, at the very notion of it.

He draws away to meet you in the eyes, an inquisitive look there as he silently watches the warm smile beam from you. Without warning, he steals the softest kiss, his lips delicately moving against yours, as if you would break like fine crystal.

Numbly you realize that the magicks that were holding your arms at bay have faded to nothing, allowing you to timidly bring your hands to his cheekbones. Your fingertips edge carefully upward over his smooth skin and weave themselves into his silken hair as the kiss deepens when your impatience gets the best of you. A playful swipe of tongue at the Cupid’s bow of his lip and he melts into you, a languid sigh coaxed from his lungs.

This kiss is nothing like the other, though no less fervent. Slow in its movement, reveling in one another’s touch. The taste of your blood on his tongue, its tang suffusing into your mouth and driving your knees weak.

His hands come to rest at the small of your back, pulling snugly against you. Butterflies are quivering from within as incomprehensible feelings flood through. His aether is caressing you, enveloping you, chasing away all the ache and you give your all to reciprocate the adoration you feel in his embrace.

So very slowly, Emet-Selch trails his fingers up the sensitive skin of your spine, sending jolts of ecstasy through you to incite a soft moan into his mouth. You can feel him smile for an instant against your lips, before he moves those deft fingers across your shoulder blades and then tickles them up your arms. Shivering beneath his touch, an afterthought of pain stipples over your flesh where he lightly presses his warm palms into your forearms—the throbbing sting a heated reminder of his former aggression.

After a moment, he brings his hands to your face, carefully pulling you ever closer still while quietly breaking the kiss. Your eyes flutter open, heart racing at his visage hovering just over your nose. Face flushed, lips swollen, pale eyes glazed over—he has never looked so mortal, so exposed, so full of desperate hope.

“Do not let me down,” he murmurs gently into your skin. 

His hands fall from your face and before you can say anything, darkened violet aether wafts about you both in a blinding cloud. When it dissolves into the wind, you are left alone again, hands suspended in the air like a fool.

You blink once, twice. Twisting your arms about in the resplendence of true daybreak, your skin is healed anew. Brushing your index finger over your neck reveals much the same.

A soft smile plays at your lips, the absolute fool you are indeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to let me know your thoughts. :)


	4. Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> O mighty warrior, at the breaking point...

One of the more irksome details of this holy crusade against the Lightwardens in Norvrandt is the fact that you can never seem to get your sleep schedule on the right track. There are truly only two options to choose from, aside of course from sneaking off back to your inn room at the Pendants—a terribly difficult task not worth the effort for someone bestowed with such a busy agenda.

On one hand, you could drag your feet along in perpetual daylight until you were near collapsing from exhaustion. Then, you could at least feign your body into some sort of semblance of a “good night’s rest” under the abominable glare in a tent or beneath the shade of a tree.

Or, you could resort to taking paltry, fleeting catnaps upon scouting some pitiful, darkened alcove to stash yourself away in—provided you could break free from the others.

The latter is often what you preferred as of late, in a vain effort to evade any wayward dreams. There is no point in attempting what would only be fitful slumber, what with the struggle of the acerbic affliction of light and the ever-present unbearable mental anguish to boot. Though you know all too well that, with the coming battle against Vauthry, you have no choice but to force yourself some genuine respite. Mayhap now is as good of a time as any for that, if only just to get your weary body back in check.

You quietly trudge along behind the Exarch back to the village of Amity, watching carefully that he would not for some reason turn his head to see you mulling about like you were one tick from tying the noose. His words ring shrill in the back of your mind, screeching you to a halt in your tracks—figuratively speaking. While it was meant to be some sort of a pep talk, it has maimed your spirit more than anything—sobering your thoughts and spurring shame into the pit of your stomach.

He had filled you up to the brim with his tale of longing for the nameless woman he wished to adventure with, for you knew that he spoke of you; it was somewhat obvious but charming, no less. Such faith and _adoration_ for you, so much pressure to bear. Not to mention his overwhelming ode to your heroic deeds forthwith, after whatever was going to come with getting past this ordeal.

Your mind is spinning out of control.

There is a deluge of hope around you that this is all going to work itself out. That you can magnificently slay down Vauthry and slake the light from this remaining stretch of deplorable land. Everyone’s smiling faces, joining together their arduous efforts to repair the Talos for the operation of the ladder and then proceeding on to this momentous task of constructing a “bridge” to Mt. Gulg.

All this hard work to lead you to your potential downfall.

You warmly think back to how Alisaie dashed up to you when the Talos for the ladder was mended. The sheer happiness in her eyes and the excitement trilling in her voice when she asked you to join her and Alphinaud in taking the first ride—how it made you fleetingly just as elated as she, like a child again.

But thoughts of the more austere chat leading up to that moment soon flood in as well, interlacing with the happy memory like a sweet poison.

How Emet-Selch strode up to you, commending you for your endeavors in bringing the people of Kholusia together—though you would say not truly all your own doing. How the soothing lull of his rich voice spoke to you of the past and of Amaurot, making that strange remark about you not remembering.

Your heart had stilled no sooner than the words fell from his lips. As if you very nearly wanted to say that you did have some sort of idea of what he was talking about—not a true memory, but at least _something_, however asinine that would have sounded. You wanted to say that you ached for him to help you to remember, so you could better understand him and his plight. To know of his true name, not merely the title. And how you wanted to save yourself from him, from ever having to hurt him or he you.

As he strolled away, seemingly without a care but with shoulders slumped low in burden, you desperately wanted to stop him. You feared that you would not see him again. 

For whatever came with scaling that dreadful mountain, it would only be despair. That much you felt pervaded into your bones—as much as you feel now, after that painful exchange with the Exarch.

Ardbert had advised you to not make the choice that would leave you alone. Why does it feel like no matter what you would choose, you would fall to the same conclusion regardless?

You snap out of your deep reverie when something softly, and quite diffidently, rests on your shoulder. Without a thought, you jump and your hand is upon your weapon, even as your eyes fall on the familiar cowl and cerulean, crystallized hand against your skin. The slight coolness shocks you, a small shriek escaping your mouth before you can help yourself. Once you gather your wits, bottom lip between your teeth in embarrassment, you mumble an apology with a coy smile.

If you could but see the Exarch’s full expression from beneath his hood, it is of mild concern with a hint of mirth in his eyes, “Is everything all right?”

Swiftly, you nod away with your head like you just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Swinging your leg from out under you in an exaggerated motion, you resume walking back to Amity with the Exarch following shortly behind. You feel like such a dunce.

Truthfully, you must clear your mind and feel very much like venting some of your current frustration on some nearby sin eaters in the area. You slip away solo, when you notice that the Exarch is otherwise preoccupied with some of the locals. There is not much guilt in doing so, considering he had informed you that he would soon be heading back to the Crystarium to examine some tomes for the gargantuan Talos. Although, more than likely it is that he needed to return to the tower to gather his strength.

Therefore, with everyone else scattered throughout Norvrandt seeing to their own preparations for Y’shtola’s plan, you honestly did not have much to do but kick rocks at this point and wait. Regrettably, you had been tasked to camp out in Amity to protect the helpless denizens of Eulmore and ensure that the nearby eaters would be held at bay from the village. No pleasantries of rest for you.

Stepping out onto the rocky terrain, you set about to slaughter the hordes of loathsome creatures, venting all your current frustrations through your might.

These lands remind you very much of Limsa Lominsa, though perhaps more uncut and rugged around the edges. The sea breeze feels just as calming, salt in the air slightly tacky against your skin.

One could be fooled to think that it is a beautiful and bright summer day out on the coast, when in truth it is nothing but a putrid farce of radiance that paints the skies. You fuel your energy, both physical and aetherial, into smiting the vermin-like beasts, rending their rotten flesh into the grit beneath your heel. For several bells you do this, until your body aches and your mind is blank.

Honestly not having a clue as to what time it is, you quickly decide that a bath and perhaps a nap are much needed. Your lungs burn as you lumber over to the nearby river to scour your skin of the grime and sweat it had accumulated from your exertions. The depths of its flow are barely enough to bathe in, its nature being more of a shallow stream than anything else. Silently, you scowl to yourself as you stoop down and tug your gloves off, then running your bare skin against its chill.

As you pool the water into your cupped fingers and attempt to cleanse your arms of the filth, a vague awareness creeps into your senses that you are being watched. A casual scan of your surroundings fails to catch anything out of the norm, though this does little to quell the unease that has seeped its way down your spine as you stand and take hold of your weapon.

Perhaps another sin eater, you muse as you step away from the riverbank and peer out into the horizon. Alas, after scouting the area thoroughly, nothing emerges. You decide to finally make the small trek back to the village.

Many of the locals that had been hanging about when you left are nowhere to be found, stirring some anxiety as you stride towards the cabin you know to be a lounge of some sort. As you step through its threshold, you spot a lone male hume sitting against the back wall with a mug of ale and then Judine, the local guide, tidying up the bar. She looks up, a warm smile at your presence. Immediately thereafter, upon taking in your slightly disheveled and unequivocally unclean appearance, she inclines her head to the side in acknowledgement.

“Well now you have been busy, haven’t you? Most of everyone has retired for the evening,” Judine informs you.

You have made note that the cabins in Amity are outfitted with dark curtains, to ward out the light and maintain the façade of a nocturnal cycle for its residents. Every region of the First has some arrangement such as this, what with the garish, heavy draping in Eulmore to the aphotic, ancient caves in the Rak’tika Greatwood. Rarely being one to keep track of the time, you had thought little of the peoples’ sleeping patterns in your wearied state when arriving in from your grisly affair on the rocky promontory.

“If you would like to clean up, I believe Grawley has gathered some water for you from the river. There should be a tub in your cabin, if you should wish to draw a bath,” the violet-haired Au Ra offers, before adding, “I rustled up some food from our stores for you as well. It is quite a rough life up here, even more so with all the eaters springing up now. You cannot imagine how grateful we are for your protection.”

Her kind smile reaches her eyes, prompting you to return the gesture with a relieved smile of your own. “And I cannot thank you enough for that. ‘Tis nothing to extend my hand to such lovely hosts,” you reply, offering a slight bow. Beginning to turn around and head to your cabin’s direction, Judine’s voice stops you.

“Oh, and do please get a bit of rest! The Exarch left behind a couple of guards from the Crystarium so that you could take a breather,” she calls as she resumes wiping off the bar’s crude, weathered surface.

You nod to her, feeling the faint abatement of tension in your shoulders and quietly you set off to your humble lodging. It is a little isolated from the rest of the housing, you take note this as you walk up to the cabin.

Opening the creaky wooden door, you find a table set with food and drink with two rickety-looking chairs, a small dresser of some sort, a large brass wash tub and a bed in the corner. The entire space is steeped in shadows, the only light coming from a large pillar candle on the dresser. It feels like the night when you shut the door closed behind you, leaning into it as you heave out a heavy sigh and wince from the bite of the pain bubbling forth.

The bed is not half bad in size, perhaps a little larger than the one you have in the Pendants though decidedly more rudimentary. Tiredly pulling off your boots and gloves, you pad over to the tub. It is already chock-full of water, to your satisfaction. You kneel down, dropping your weapon and pouch carelessly, to run your fingers through. Ice-cold, as if just harvested from the flow of the river.

With some effort, you brace your hands against the tub to stand and begin to strip your armor off—coat, trousers, and tunic down to just smallclothes. A quick peek around at the darkened windows satisfies you that you are indeed free of prying eyes and so then peel those off as well.

Slowly, you lift your foot and step into the bath, submerging your entire body under the intensely frigid waters. Its temperature would have been stingingly raw for most anyone else, but for you it is marvelously invigorating—numbing at the throb beneath your skin. The basin is deep and more than large enough for your frame, which is something worth appreciating as well. You loll your head backwards and breathe deeply for a while, relishing in the feeling of this bit of respite.

It does not take long for the dark thoughts to crowd in. A sore reminder of why you truly did not like to return to the Pendants, into the quiet with your broken mind.

Despite those voices from within wailing at your crippled and misshapen soul to stop, to forget, to abandon—you long for him to come and see you again.

Your eyes, closed tightly in your solitude, sting beneath the delicate skin of your lids. A heavy weight has settled itself in beneath your sternum, pressing and pulling viciously but you know no way of lightening it, clipping its cord so that you could be free of it. The pathos of this yearning is shattering away at your resolve. More deep-rooted than any pain you have been enduring, as taxing as that has been for you. For you are positively heartsick at this point, you know it.

You have fallen, fallen so spitefully hard for that damned Ascian. You cannot get him out of your mind and are afraid for it.

How in the hells does something like this happen? If Hydaelyn is a primal in the true sense, would She not have spurned you immediately for it? Even if not a primal, to entangle so intimately with a child of Zodiark, would that not be grounds to discard you? Perhaps it is more that you are renouncing Her…

Or, that the matter is not that black and white.

The deception to your friends forever singes into your heart. Like a slow, smoking blaze, it scalds and blackens and renders your spirit raw. You wonder what they would think of you, cavorting with the inveterate enemy, the thorn rooted deeply within _your_ side and theirs— the entire damned Eorzean Alliance besides. Emet-Selch’s bad deeds not only encompassed that which could be blamed for by the Ascians, but also of the Garlean Empire as its blasted founding father. A funny thing, for you to often find yourself overlooking the fact that he had been Solus zos Galvus, even with the ostentatious regalia frequently serving as a heated reminder. Although a brilliant leader in his right, Solus was responsible for the subjugation and death of far too many to tally—all to pave the way for the Rejoining.

And yet you somehow see beyond that. Not really to discount its bloodied connotations for you and yours but rather to see the man behind the violence, behind the glyph. There is something else there, something as dreadfully inexplicable and pained as is your difficulty in remembering who he is. You do not understand it. But it is there nonetheless and you are drawn so gravely close to it.

For all your pathetic lack of acumen into your own feelings for the man, just how could you come clean to anyone about it? Thus, you remain in the shadows and your stigma festers like an unhealing wound.

You cannot help yourself but to speculate what his feelings are for you, what you are to him.

There exists a penchant within him for building you up and then breaking you back down, as if he does not even understand what he wants. He looks at you as if you are a lover from a life long ago, and then nonchalantly speaks of the prospect of killing you, as he had done in the Ocular. You are ephemeral and limited by the nature of your fragmented existence, as is his wont to profess. Yet the way he speaks to you with the others is vastly different from when you are alone with him; he speaks to you as if you are his equal, someone he knows.

The hostility is of something else, something on a different plane of thought that makes you feel frightened and threatened and—even more so than anything—enticed.

You are no stranger to the scourges of battle, your body riddled with scars small and large, so many that you have forgotten how most of them even came to be. With all of that being the case, it is not that you are one to go out seeking pain for pleasure. It merely comes with the territory of being a warrior.

However, there was something about that release you felt when Emet-Selch had laid his hands on you. You cannot deny it. It was profoundly intimate and sensual in its undertaking, sinfully unsafe but still so. Somewhere deep down you _craved_ for him to hurt you, to punish you for reasons you cannot presently fathom. It is more than just a little unsettling to think about.

You desperately attempt to push back and forget about what comes next with the Talos being complete, what lies in wait at the top of that mountain.

Whether you will prevail or not. Your possible failure.

For your most adamant wish, at this point, is to not disappoint _him_ and survive to see what comes after—to know more of him. Something you would never admit to anyone.

Lamentably, you begin to feel as if the water is not as refreshing as it once was. You pull you head up to lean over the edge of the tub and rummage through your bag for some soap to scrub the grime away. Blindly, your hand fumbles until it grasps onto a smooth, satin-wrapped bar. The soap you had procured from Fanow, some strangely fragrant concoction from the Rava clan of Viera. When you pull it from its casing, its light floral scent infiltrates your nostrils and is rather calming—something of gardenia and the fresh haze of rainfall. The softness of its texture builds a luscious lather quickly against your forearm as you work it into your skin.

Slowly, you slide the bar over your arms. Breathing deeply and closing your eyes, you tip your head back into the water until your entire skull is submerged, then only opening your eyes to see the darkness above you. You run the soap through your hair gently and over your body, taking advantage of the fact that you could breathe under the depths without falter. Fingers gliding across your skin—shoulders, sternum, and then down to the curve of your breasts. 

You quietly break the surface from under the water and begin rubbing the lather into your sensitive flesh with slickened fingers, your eyes fluttering to close again while flashes flit through your mind of someone else touching you, cool silk pressing and stroking softly over your quivering skin.

A sharp sigh exhales from your lips into the silence of the cabin, your fingertips edging down your abdomen. You skim past that most coveted region to instead work the soap over your legs and then your feet. Once satisfied, your hands glide over your hips generously and run down between the soft flesh of your inner thighs, breath catching and head tipping itself back as the pressure settles where you desire it the most.

The faintest of touches ghosts along your arms as you begin to lose yourself, a coolness enveloping from around your shoulders and taming the blaze from within. Your fingers slide between your folds and your thighs drift apart, back arching and hip shifting for a sweeter purchase. The chill slides from your shoulders to the dip of your neck, then traverses down the delicate fall to your breasts. It is then that the cold morphs suddenly into hot, silken smoothness cupping and kneading so deliciously at your flesh, pulling and tweaking to beckon a throaty moan from your mouth.

The water is now roiling and sloshing about from your movements, your head sagging to the side of the tub and you feel something soft yet firm press against your cheekbone. So swept up in the heat of bliss you are that it takes another moment or so before your mind registers that something is off kilter. Almost as if ripping yourself from the depths of a dream, your eyes force themselves open and instinctively cast upwards to meet another set of eyes, the color of the sun.

In a moment such as this, one would think it proper to scream. Such as it is, you do so with abandon before Emet-Selch removes one of his gloved hands from your aching breasts and clasps it to your mouth to muffle its pitch, the dampened silk feeling supple and warm to touch. He is draped around you in a most intimate back hug of sorts. A smirk is tugging at the corner of his mouth as he brings his lips to your ear.

“Is it your goal to beseech the entire settlement to pour into this tiny shack and see you in such a state?” he breathes hotly into the fine hairs just below your ear from behind, removing his other hand to gently lift your soaking locks and move them to the other side of your neck. You try to bat his hand away as he does this, irritation storming your senses that he would possess such audacity. He then lifts his hands from you to your nethermost dismay with a deep chuckle that is most appealing in its melody, remaining stooped beside the tub.

“Gods, what the fuck are you doing, Emet?! How long have you even been here?” you admonish, not thinking twice of dropping the formalities of using his entire title. You decide in that moment that you both have breached past such propriety.

Turning around and scooting away to the other side of the tub, you tightly draw your knees up to your chest and try to cover as much of your curves as your arms and legs can manage. You shoot the sharpest of daggers into his amused face.

One of the Ascian’s elegant eyebrows perks up at the sound of your vulgar language, and at the twist of the name you have bestowed upon him.

“No point in all of that staunch effort, my dear. I would deem that my eyes have had quite their fill, though that would admittedly be a falsehood, “ he croons as he folds his lavishly adorned arms over the lip of the tub and rests his chin on the crux of his wrist, complete with an impish smile. “I do not believe my eyes could ever grow weary of your most _delectable_ form.” He says this as his eyes smoulder into yours, before his mouth parts open and he tries to take a playful peek from around your huddled body across the tub.

Your face swiftly flushes scarlet red at his remark and unconsciously your teeth worry at your bottom lip, uselessly folding in on yourself even more earnestly. Of course he had seen everything. Hells, he likely has seen it all well before now anyway, what with his magical powers of poofing directly into your space at all odd times of the day. You scowl at the thought, more at its unfairness than at its lack of civility.

“Whatever is the matter, darling? You did not seem to be bothered all too much at my attentions but a moment ago. Nor during our last encounter,” he declares with a faint smile, his jesting demeanor seemingly vanishing from the memory.

“No, it was rather ni—“ The confession comes unbidden and it is already too late to take it back. You immediately close your eyes and bite your lip in humiliation with yourself. A small sigh of defeat deflates from your lungs as you crack your eyes open, and you reflexively grind your teeth in anxiety when you look upon Emet again.

His gaze has taken on a most sultry aspect, standing up to full height and thus towering over you in such a way that you feel like an insect to his godlike stature. Your grip on your knees loosens as you look up at the beautiful creature, an implicit need taking root within you to unravel before him—the erstwhile notion of annoyance draining away.

“Have you not claimed before that you like to watch?” the question slips out of your mouth before you can stop it, and a tiny trickle of disquietude shoots down to your belly button at its innuendo. Your lack of tenacity is downright shameful.

Emet’s stare lies cripplingly on you as he clicks his tongue, not choosing to answer right away.

For a moment, he just stands there in intense silence, at the foot of the tub. It is so dark in the cabin that you have to strain your sight to see his expression. The only thing you can clearly make out is the gold in his eyes, yellow flecks swirled and flickering by the candlelight. Like some sort of caricature of a beast in the night.

Then slowly, he steps to one of the chairs at the table, his focus never leaving you and your body languorously unfurls itself in the water before him like a lotus. He lifts a hand in the darkness. A little gasp breaks free from you as he snaps his finger and the simple chair at his feet transforms into a lavish, plush lounge, covered in rich red velvet and gold leaf—fit for a royal, for an emperor.

You swallow near audibly as he settles down on it with an artful sophistication, draping his body before you with such ease. It dawns on you that the lighting in the expanse of the cabin has improved. There are more candles about, in elegant freestanding candelabras, casting a warm glow against your naked skin.

“I should think you would know the answer to that question by now.” His voice has dropped several octaves, deep and suggestive in its undertone. He props his arm on the low lying armrest, and places a long index finger to the tip of his chin before tightening his gloved hand into a fist and blanketing ravenous scrutiny upon you.

The tension in the air is palpable as you let your head fall to the lip of the tub and nervously shed away your inhibitions.

Your fingers trail over your body, teasing and slow, down past the swell of your breasts and back over your sternum. Head lazing back but meeting Emet’s eyes, you drag your fingernails down the deep valley between your peaks and under the water to your navel. The skin there is quaking in anxiety, as your mouth opens in hushed inhalation and your touch grazes over your mound with delicacy.

Emet watches soundlessly with darkness bathed over harsh lines, gathering in the hollows under sharpened cheekbones and piercing eyes. From where he sits, the visage would most certainly be clear: your body arced before him in sin with no thoughts given to what happens on the morrow—only to speak volumes of your innermost selfish desires in this very moment.

It is difficult to describe the emotions flitting through you as your performance continues, hooded eyes sweeping over the object of your primal fantasy. The pull of your being into the shadows, beckoning you to lift yourself from the waters and fall into him, as so many of your daydreams ended and began. The need that has settled over you is raw and ripe, granting you intent to do precisely that.

Hooking your gaze to his dark eyes, you cease all ministrations to your body and pull yourself to your feet. Carefully, you step out of the tub and walk the short distance to his prone form. You feel as if you have known him for ages and somehow feel a virgin all the same, shivering like a tree branch in the harsh wind.

He is looking up at you with the most odd look that burrows deep into your chest, your knee going weak and breaking your fall against the lounge. Fine droplets of water trickle down your skin onto the lush velvet, blooming its red hue to a ruddy black against your bare knee as you ease your other leg down.

But you do not fully bow down before him; rather, you hold your form over the Ascian and peer back down at him beneath you, hands resting innocently at your sides.

Emet maintains eye contact with you as he sits up painstakingly deliberate and leans into the back of the lounge, still allowing you the upper hand over his prostrate position. His robes lay sprawling around him, leather and fur and silk bleeding into the margins of your vision. 

He does not seem to be breathing as his eyes fall from yours and roam over your naked skin, glistening like morning dew. It is with a striking hint of reverence, and you are not sure if you are even breathing.

A white lock of hair loosens and falls against his brow as his attention focuses on his left gloved hand, taking his pouted lips delicately to the tips of his index and middle finger. His gold eyes meet with yours again before pulling the white silk away with his teeth, wickedly slow in its movement. You have to bite the side of your tongue to keep your wits about you, to hold onto some resolve as you watch him lift his right hand and do the same. He appears so vulnerable beneath you, nigh expectant.

Just as you are about to give up and descend upon him, Emet shifts nimbly in his position beneath you and fits his left leg between your knees. The warm grip of his bare hand grasps roughly onto your thigh and hitches you forward into him, straddling you fully onto his lap. You yelp loudly at the contact as he seats you firmly against his still fully clothed body, grand robes crumpling perversely under your shins and knees without a care. His hands slide possessively against your skin, from your thighs up to the swell of your hips as he looks up at your lustful expression and pulls you even closer into him, a starved look to his eyes.

Your breasts are exposed before him. All it would take w—

“Gods, Emet…” you breathe between dry lips when he captures his mouth onto your left nipple, his tongue swirling and laving before grazing teeth roughly over the sensitive flesh.

You have no choice but to heave into him in desperate need, arms folding around his broad shoulders and shaking fingers twisting through his soft hair as he ravishes your senses. He hums hotly into your soft tissue, seeming to relish in your touch carding through his locks while he sucks against your flesh. One of his hands is preoccupied by pushing into the small of your back, pressing you more firmly into him while the other is sensuously caressing the breast not occupied by his mouth, massaging and pinching at delicate skin. You allow your head to fall back, losing yourself to his versed touch.

It is sweltering, the warmth brought forth from his mouth and hands against your skin. The rich fabric of his clothing edges over the heated pulse between your thighs, the lurid thought of your juices sopping over his pretty finery eliciting you to grind against his hips. You both cry out in unison at the exchange, the sharp teeth at your breast clamping down as his groan is muffled by your flesh. Even with the dense regalia, he is so solid beneath you, positively bursting from his trousers and bringing you the friction you so crave at your sex.

“Such impatience,” he scolds over your skin before dragging his tongue across your breast and sweeping it up to your collarbone, then pressing a messy kiss there. “I intend to take my time with you, angel.”

Your heart dives low at his words as you recline your head back again with a half-broken sigh but his arm reins you back into him, his fingers sliding and tickling at the nape of your neck. He brings his mouth to meet you halfway as you melt into him, soft lips brushing over yours in an almost gentle kiss. Despite its softness and likely even the source for it, a maelstrom churns within your rib cage.

As you pull away to break for air, his lips follow yours, wrapping his arms around you in a most tender gesture. His tongue finds its way into your mouth to deepen the kiss, a low growl rumbling against your lips and you can feel him tipping you back, back to the creamy texture of the velvet beneath you.

Something feels off as the skin of your back touches the cool surface below, Emet’s weight settled only partially over you with his elbow braced beside your splayed hair. Your eyes drift open and you nearly bite his tongue when you realize that your surroundings have morphed into something else altogether.

Unthinking, you pull harshly at the fine tresses at the nape of Emet’s skull and break the kiss abruptly. The man sharply gasps, Adam’s apple pulsing as he swallows audibly, the telltale throbbing of his prominent erection against your thigh at the action. You would have to make note of that for later.

“Where are we, Emet?” you demand breathlessly, body tensing as you try to sit up and look around.

It is an elegant bedroom of some sort, large but somehow comfortable all the same. The walls are adorned with fine mahogany paneling and gorgeously subtle paintings. A beautiful, unlit fireplace sits on one side of the room and there are several tall windows about, the skies blackened outside. The lighting is low, ambient light cast off by ornate lamps set on matching night tables on either side of the expansive, carved wooden bed you laid upon. In the periphery, you think that you can see those same candelabras from before. White, silken sheets are strewn under your naked skin, its cool texture in contrast to that of warm velvet being the trigger that snapped you from your trance but a moment before.

“You wouldn’t remember.” The soft whisper is nearly swallowed by the sheer silence of the room.

Your eyes dart back to Emet, watching with rapt attention as he lifts himself from you to shrug his jacket off and unclasp the buckle at his waist to shed free of his heavy outer robes. He swiftly slips the offending clothing from himself and tosses it off the side of the bed, eyes never leaving yours. The boots vanish with the snap of his fingers. And before you can think to ask any more questions, he sinks down upon you and his lips are on yours again, near crushing against you in intensity as he grasps onto your wrists and pins them above your head.

It is too hot to fight him, however, what with all the blood rushing and the excitement and the corrupt light baking you from the inside.

This is what you tell yourself as you sigh into his mouth and nip into the yielding flesh of his bottom lip.

So what if he had whisked you away to somewhere else, out of that “tiny shack” as he had put it? The people of Amity would be quite all right without you for a little while, you are sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, the next chapter is pure smut- like to the hilt, a little over 12 pages worth on MS Word. There is some fluff to be had, of course.


	5. The Abyss     -EX-

Transcendent.

If you had to pluck but one word from your head to describe the sensations that Emet-Selch is eliciting throughout your mind and body and soul, it would be transcendent. For so many words cannot simply describe how your breath is stripped from you, your flesh is worshipped, or your heart is enslaved. It beyond anything you could have fathomed. Any other whom you had taken into your bed has been smothered out and is deemed meaningless, naught but a prick of a raindrop to the torrent that is now engulfing—nay, drowning you away.

His skilled touch expertly maps you out as if you are some sort of atlas bound in living form, testing your boundaries and weaknesses in a divinely measured process. And for once in your selfless and tiring existence, you allow yourself to be unconditionally served—though not by weapon and fury, but by his body and his insatiable need to stoke your fire.

Emet begins his work on your unassuming hand, pressing a tender kiss to your knuckle and meeting you in the eyes in doing so, a most simple yet chivalrous gesture that drives you dizzy with lust. Then, intensely slow he runs his lips and tongue on upwards over the soft flesh of the inside of your arm, nipping and sucking indulgently to dapple brazen marks upon your skin. Somewhere along the way to exploring the rest of your body, he seems to become lost in your eyes and the two of you are embracing, exchanging heated kisses before either of you realize.

Yet ere the dalliance advances too far, he breaks himself away from your lips and sets to work on your legs. He is adept with his hands, kneading into your calves and feet, sliding his tongue on up, up the length of your entire limb from the ticklish arch of your foot to the soft yield of your inner thigh. He is mindful to stop there and prowls up your body with care.

Strong hands come to cup and stroke at your breasts, Emet’s lips just barely grazing against the creamy and supple tissue. His touch is teasing, agonizing to your senses as his tongue draws obscure patterns into the delicate skin around your areola, deliberately avoiding where you truly desire it. There is a glint of devilry to his eyes as he finally catches a nipple betwixt his teeth and pulls away just enough to prompt you to squeal out in pain, though the ache delightfully pulses to your sex. You attempt to press yourself into him, tangling a leg around his torso for much needed friction but he clicks his tongue with a crooked smile, grasping onto your thighs to effectively restrain you down as he has his way with you.

His breath is warm and hushed along the prickled flesh of your abdomen—tracing his wet tongue along ugly and forgotten scars of eld. Of course, there are fresh scars that mar your skin. Some more tender than others. To these, when he senses your frame shiver ever so slight beneath his touch, he meets his eyes iridescent to yours and guardedly kisses your ruined skin with what feels like admiration.

It serves as a perplexing contradiction to when he harshly drags his teeth over the soft flesh under your navel, sinking down the sharpness of his bite and sucking at the slight give there over toned muscle. A low whimper quivers from your lips at this, grasping firmly to the silken sheets at your sides as heat blooms between your thighs. Hastily, you arc your hips upward and writhe beneath him, all but begging in words for him _not_ to stop.

Emet easily pins you down with his hands gripped at your waist, a mischievous smile playing at his lips as he looks up at your frown. “Now, now. Do calm yourself, darling. Time is but a trifle. Just lie back and enjoy yourself for once.” There is a mellifluous lilt in his deeper, now more carnal tone of voice that keeps you from retorting and instead bids you to acquiesce.

Haltingly he presses a soft but impassioned kiss to the now aching skin of your stomach, dipping his tongue and soothing away its soreness. His hair deep burgundy and white hangs over gilded eyes and dances over your skin as he does so. He then begins to edge down further along your body, running with his moist lips a path that scorches fire straight to your core.

As your eyes roll back and your breath quickens, unbearable heat washing through your viscera from the pleasure that Emet bestows and the pain that the light’s affliction unleashes, there is a cool softness that presses into you. It grazes over your skin like a shroud imbued with thousands upon thousands of miniscule ice crystals, chilling and warding off the fever from becoming too much for you to tolerate.

In a daze, you comprehend that this is his shadowed aether, washing over you and fetching much needed relief. It coalesces within and throughout your own blistering hot aether, entwining and melting together as if nothing else had ever made as much sense. The air is stolen from your lungs.

A gentle, trembling kiss tickles at the sensitive flesh at the top of your inner thigh, startling you into sentience. You slowly lift your back from the sheets, muscles twitching in your abdomen in anticipation as you catch the most salacious visage upon Emet’s face, his brilliant eyes raking over your body splayed out before him. All of this while he hikes a thigh around his shoulder, then brushing his fingertips featherlight over the delicate tissue along the juncture of your limb and sex.

“You are beyond exquisite. Your soul…” he murmurs emphatically over your skin, words trailing off as he seems to lose himself. The warmth of his breath flushes over your slit, spread open and just a couple of ilms from his salivating mouth. He is peering deeply into you, all over and through you. In his eyes, there is a curious mix of longing and something akin to pain.

Your face burning hot with flames from his praise, you begin to open your mouth to ask him what is wrong but he swiftly takes his index finger and glides it over your folds, easily moving along your slickened wetness. You bite your lip harshly and drop your body back to the bed with a soft thud and a guttural sigh at the back of your throat, succumbing to the sensations as he begins working his fingers against your lips.

His touch seems to purposely avoid the throbbing hood of your clit, teasingly spreading through your tender labia but stopping just shy of drifting any higher. You feel a fingertip brush just over your drenched and clenching entrance, then slide up through your folds excruciatingly slow and your breath catches as you think that he will touch that most sensitive region. But he does not, a smug look to his eyes that spells your foretold torture as he watches you squirm. This goes on for a few moments, at first extremely stimulating and then numbing away as you crave more.

Emet sees your frustration, spelled out plainly by the scowl situated on your face as you push your weight against your elbows to let it be known. You see the devious smirk spread over his mouth as soon as you look at him. He chuckles softly before pressing a most sluggish kiss on the soft flesh just beside your clit while simultaneously hooking his middle finger deep inside of you, bringing you to arch your back like a bow and breathe out a shamefully loud moan.

It is then that he begins working you, pumping his finger steadily in and out of your dripping cunt several times and then adding a second finger to mount up the pleasure. He somehow knows just where to angle his attentions, for with every thrust is your undoing. Your hips involuntarily meet his hand with every plunge, buckling and quaking against his touch—vulgar noises of your wet flesh infiltrating the quiet. His intense eyes are trained on your flushed countenance, watching you so easily fall apart into pieces before him.

Somewhere lost in the euphoria of the moment and just as you reach for his thick mane to entangle your hands into, he dips his mouth to slide his smooth, hot tongue through your folds, coating it in your juices as he fucks you wide open with skilled fingers. A deep cry resonates from your throat and you feel your thigh tightening around Emet’s shoulder, your body beckoning with all its force to pull him further into you. He needs to take his free hand to firmly hold your hip, pinning you down with a greater force as he runs his tongue deftly between your lips and then finally upward to your clit, softly swirling and flicking its heated wetness over the bud. Your eyes see stars, infinite.

It feels so good, so good, so fucking amazingly good as you struggle to grind your hips into his face, bucking against his hold pressing you into the now clinging silk sheets beneath. You spread your legs more wide for him as he flutters his tongue over your clit and then he adds a third finger, sending a jolting and nigh afflictive wave of pleasure billowing through you from the stretch of your convulsing walls around his hand. He groans into your cunt as you pull on his silken tresses, massaging and scratching and digging your nails into his scalp. Its sound rumbles over your sex in a sensation that sends you gasping.

You are positively soaking at this point, wetness seeping from your slit and pooling into the sheets below. It would be near embarrassing if not for how exceedingly arousing it is to see how it affects Emet.

His striking gold eyes have taken on a glossy sheen, the skin around his high cheekbones is flushed, his vermilion lips glisten wet with your juices—bruised and swollen into a deeper crimson. You want to kiss those lips so badly but the pressure is escalating, the heat is unfurling itself through you in waves in such a way that you are driven utterly weak from his expert ministrations on your body.

He removes his fingers from your sex so that he can dip his thirsty tongue into your honey and fully taste you, lapping at your tender flesh until you are clean just so that he can make a mess of you all over again.

Throwing your head back with shallow breaths, he allows you to freely ride your mound into his mouth and onto his tongue, slowly grinding your hips and bucking them upwards. His tongue effectively fucks you breathless, delving and thrusting into your squeezing, trembling walls.

A notion hazes into your broken thoughts that there is more at play to his offering, for his tongue feels as if it has expanded in breadth—filling you to the brim and extending beyond what would be considered normal. Its hot slickness snakes into you, surging against a delicate spot from within that pushes you to choke out hopelessly in abandon. You lift your heavy head to meet the sharp, rakish look in his gleaming eyes as he brings you your pleasure, and can only watch wordlessly as his tongue imbued with magicks pulls achingly from you to then vibrate over your sensitive nub.

He then begins sucking hungrily over your clit, sending pulsing thrills of rapture through you, driving his fingers back into you until you are screaming his name, as the rolls of ecstasy wash over you and you are driven to that peak of bliss as you meet him in the eyes, frozen in their amber.

You shudder beneath his mouth and hands, heels digging into the delicate bedding, a faint wonder in the back of your mind of how it had not ripped into tatters against all of your wild thrashing. He laves his tongue over you until you fall back feebly against the sheets, all strength drained from your body. Your fingers quiver as you comb through his hair and drift from your high, a wide smile working its way onto your lips.

The weight settles into your languid form before your cognizance correctly grasps that Emet has twisted himself back up over you, pressing indulgent kisses along his path. His mouth traverses over the swell of your chest and up the column of your neck, white forelock tickling and dragging against your skin. Then his mouth is upon yours, devouring.

You can smell and taste yourself on his lips, as he drives his knee into your overly sensitive sex and moves his warm hands to palm greedily at your breasts. A sharp gasp from your lips at the contact allows him to deepen the kiss, delving his tongue into your mouth with desperate need. You kiss him back just as fervently, feeling the gentle and cool touch of his red sash dangling at the skin near your navel.

Stricken with the urgency to seek back control and displeased with how many articles of his clothing are still in the way, you shift under Emet to place your hand at his broad chest, just under the opulent bauble at his collar. You begin lifting yourself up, though not breaking the kiss. His fingers tweak a bit harshly onto your nipples at this but you do not yield, nudging him upward enough to gradually break his lips from yours—a trail of saliva spun and drug out between your open mouths.

He has a spellbound look on his face, pale radiant eyes shining into yours. His lush lips are pouted, expectant and you want to kiss them again.

So, you do—roughly so, pressing your lips to his and gnawing at his bottom lip until he groans deeply into your mouth. As you do this, his hands have found their way to weave through your hair and you utilize it as your opportunity to rip his red sash free, tugging it with force from his chest and thereby pulling him flush into you. With the both of you now sitting upright on the bed, you have to solidly brace your body by shifting your knee to prevent from falling underneath him and surrendering to his whims yet again. This decidedly would not be a bad outcome per se, but you do have other things in mind.

Once the bothersome sash is free, just as you pull from the kiss to fumble at his odd collar, you taste the whisper of blood upon your tongue. Glancing up at Emet’s countenance, you see a small but rather nasty looking gash at his lip from where you bit him.

He has a most inviting, mouthwatering smile toying at his lips, freeing one hand from your hair to brush at the wound with his thumb. Licking his mouth and peering down at the blood, he laughs seemingly more to himself before casting his glowing eyes into yours.

“You are a bit of a spitfire, I see,“ he purrs, leaning in to ravenously capture your lips to his, then moving his hand to grip firmly and possessively at your ass as the other hand sifts through your tresses.

Your heart is racing, feeling him gain the upper hand again as he leans you backward to the bed. You could easily fall to it but your defiance has kicked in. Holding your ground, you push back on his weight and rip at his collar, sending the strange orb flying in the air and popping onto the floor where it rolls away into the shadows.

A mad sort of chuckle springs out of Emet’s lips at that, and you eagerly fumble your fingers at the now exposed ties to his inner robes. You imagine to yourself that if he wanted, he could easily overpower you in this lascivious state—even without his magicks. But he allows you to work the robes off his shoulders, exposing pale naked skin, lean muscle rippling just beneath.

Running your hands over his warm flesh, you move to kiss his bare shoulder just past his clavicle, your hair brushing into his neck in doing so. There is a faint tremor to the fine yield below your lips, inciting you to continue drifting your mouth down his chest.

You smile into his skin just over his rib when the notion strikes you to forcibly push him back down on the bed beneath you. Swiftly, you shove his body down and powerfully wrap your thighs around his hips, allowing your full weight to settle into him. Emet instinctively grasps onto the toned expanse of your thighs as you do so and hisses from the friction of your body pressing into his. A moan falls from you in return, bearing no small amount strength down upon him and then lifting in a sensuous grinding motion, feeling his pulsing erection rub sinfully across your soaking crevice.

There is now only the thin material of his pants that lie between you, and perhaps smallclothes. Vaguely you wonder what color as you dip down low again, teasingly slow. _That_ earns you a smarting smack to the ass, causing you to bounce up a bit and yelp in shock.

“You should tread carefully, lest you wish for me to put you to my knee,” Emet rasps out in a ragged breath with molten gold eyes drinking in your form, hands clawed into the yielding flesh of your hips to pull and press you thoroughly against his rigid cock.

A bolt of exhilaration crackles down to your toes as you throw your head back, a throaty laugh breaking from your lips at his words. “Is that a promise?” you sigh out provocatively as you look down upon his dissolute form, his lips parted open in a hoarse and broken groan as you drag slow against him yet again.

In response, Emet curls his body upward and your eyes pleasingly catch the abdominal muscles tensing under the pressure before he eagerly pulls you into him and nuzzles his face between your breasts. His wet mouth captures onto a nipple, twisting his tongue around the areola before nipping the skin a tad severely and sucking at it with zeal. As he is doing so, before your mind can register what your hand is doing, it is already burrowing itself into his breeches from between your splayed thighs.

Emet chokes out a deep gasp against your flesh and tenses into your body as you graze your fingers slowly across his length, the feeble material of his smallclothes proving to be the final barrier. His reaction to your touch is so titillating, so seductive that you just have to hear more.

You decide to try something, although not positive in the least that he would allow for it.

Continuing to work your hips into him, you thread your fingers into his hair and pull his mouth to yours in an unhurried kiss, sensual in its undertaking as you tease your tongue against his. He relaxes into you, spreading and kneading his hands over your breasts and then to your backside. The moment quickly becomes extremely intense and intimate, an outpouring of ardor for one another. It drives you under, like an anchor into the depths of the sea and you are feeling the tether wring and rend itself apart as his breath against your lips burns you into complacence.

But before absolutely losing yourself into him, you gradually pitch your full weight and press him back down unto the bed. Then, and only then, do you let a hand fall free from his mane to reach for the discarded red sash you knew to be lying nigh a fulm from your reach.

Emet takes immediate note of what you are doing, breathing out a deep, gravelly chuckle into your lips as your fingers clutch at the silky cloth. “Wish to play with me?” he suggests once you pull just barely away from him, to where you could feel the blazing heat of his words against your skin.

You cannot help but offer an excited beam of a smile at him, wrapping the sash around your wrists and playfully pulling it taut as you lift your body from his. “Why, yes,“ you assert with a spirited nod. “So that you will have something lovely to remember every time you put this…well, whatever this thing is on?”

An eyebrow twists up on his face and an impulsive giggle bursts free from your lips, becoming lost in the moment with him. Luckily, one of the bed posts is close enough so that all you need to do is truss him up and get to work. Carefully you pull his hands from you and begin weaving the fine fabric about his wrists in a slow, purposeful manner, making a little show of it in the process.

As you are doing so, a strange feeling begins washing over you. Very subtle at first but, as you lean over Emet to bind his wrists to the post in the most seductive dance you can make of it, your eyes catch at his and it hits you full throttle—enough to cause you to freeze as stone over him.

It solidly grounds you and you have to remember to keep breathing and moving, playing it off so that _perhaps_ he does not notice. It is like you are replaying a memory. An old, forgotten song from long ago, echoed from the past and yet as soon as you hear the first few notes, it is like its melody never left your mind to begin with. Something whispers to you, from within those notes.

_You have been here before. Rememb—_

A soft kiss to the inside of your elbow snaps you back into the present with a tiny gasp. Your name falls from his lips, and your heart blossoms at its resonance upon his tongue. It is the first time he has said it, and at such a moment.

There appears to be concern written upon his face and he asks you if you are all right, or something of that nature. You lean down to ghost your lips over his, as a token to insist that you are fine. Your eyes are stinging as you finish the intricate knot and then you let your body drape over his, pressing into him and all you can feel in this instant is how much you do not want this time to end.

You continue to tease achingly slow movements of your hips into him, breasts falling over his lips and you can feel him reaching, pulling against the restraints to taste your skin. It is difficult to hide your pain so you close your eyes, surrendering to the sensations of your flesh against his.

Your fingers crawl down along warmth of his pale skin, over the firm planes of his chest and abdomen faintly dusted with fine, dark hair. Tongue and teeth stroke and pull at his hardened nipples, a deep carmine hue close to that of the lips of his mouth, parted open as he sighs into your touch.

Edging down lower, past the wake of delicate hairs trailing beneath his navel and near the hem of his pants, you place a lingering, soft kiss just over the dip of his hip bone. You can feel his sex throbbing underneath your heaving breasts and you must pause to allow awareness to catch up with the rest of your body.

Are you really breathing that heavily?

You are near panting and not quite from the heat of the tainted light because Emet’s aether is still lolled lushly into yours. Looking up into his eyes, the pale gilden shade steeped in darkness as he gazes down at you in prurient desire, your fingers undo the buttons of his breeches and hook underneath the fine cloth to drag it away, leaving only his smallclothes.

The flimsy material, which is of a rich black color, does very little to shroud Emet’s substantial need for you, his length engorged upwards in tension against the fabric. Your mouth runs dry as you graze your fingertip over the underside of his shaft, through the thin cloth, meeting him in the eyes as you do so. What you receive in return is a small hitch in his breath, nostrils flared at the sharp intake of air and eyes seemingly cleaving straight through you with biting intensity.

The sound of the red sash pulling at the bed post fills the quiet of the room, a thrumming reverberation of fabric popping against solid mahogany. Your heart quickens with the tortuous slow tug that Emet’s strength bestows upon his restraints, cut muscles tensing and shifting in his biceps and forearms. His core is taut in what you could only suspect as anticipation, as he lies prone before you. For all those complaints about physical activity, he is the picture of health with just the right amount of lean brawn on his physique.

With little thought of it, you nearly tear off his smallclothes, crawling backwards down his body in doing so.

He is beautiful, cool white flesh tinged a rose pink from the blood and heat enflamed beneath. His head bobs lewdly, glistening with a trace of pearl. Combing your fingers through his soft, curled dark hair, you note how well groomed he is—but of course he would be, you smile as you lower your mouth a hairsbreadth away from his sex.

You can feel how wet you are for him, how soaked you are between your thighs as you coax your fingers softly against the delicate skin of his length, along and underneath its head. Your tongue dips under and over the skin there, cleaning away the precum in a tantalizing swipe. He tastes of mellow nectar and you smile yet more at its inference for him to please you.

Emet growls jarringly under his breath, giving a dangerous yank to the post and flexing his toned thighs around you. A tingle of delight tinged with unease rushes down your spine as you watch him, running your hand down his smooth length. You follow this with your tongue before you take him full into your hot mouth, rolling the moist muscle over his skin and swallowing him in as far as you can go. You can feel the sheer tension of his body beneath yours as you continue drawing him in, sliding your tongue around and sucking generously as you pull back, right hand gently torqueing the rest of his length while the left tentatively cups and massages his scrotum.

It is empowering and you soon become lost in your actions, having this mighty being in your grasp and shuddering before you. You can sense that he is holding himself back, trying not to let go and become undone, struggling to remain as silent as he can with small sighs and heavy breathing. It makes it all the more intensely erotic and you cannot help but to moan into him, moving one of your hands to graze between your thighs as you look up at his visage.

His eyes are closed and head is near thrown back, muscles gently rippling in his abdomen as he flexes and begins rocking his hips to match the tempo of your lips and tongue. You can hear the fabric of the sash stretching and popping even more under the tension of his pull.

Suddenly, you hear a snapping noise, its all too familiar pitch igniting your senses.

Slowing your ministrations but not stalling them, you weakly watch on as Emet lifts his head, tendons in his neck pulling under the pale flesh of his throat and red wine hair tousling around his chiseled jaw as he tilts his chin down to meet your gaze. The amber pools in his eyes flash and glint as a knowing grin creeps upon one side of his dark lips, thriving into that devilish visage which has carved itself into your tormented psyche for many sleepless weeks on end.

The red sash is not at his wrists, but now somehow upon your own.

You inanely stare at the material now wound tightly, digging near painfully against your skin, struggling to understand how it even happened. How your hands were just touching him, touching yourself… Either time had just skipped or you are fully losing your mind.

Emet’s husky laughter jolts you from your stupor and you cast your eyes upward to see him slink his body forward like some sort of feral predator upon you. The cognizance not kicking in that you have been edging backward on the bed, your foot gets tangled about the silk sheets and you stagger backwards, only for the Ascian to wrap his arms around you to catch your fall. His hands move to grasp onto your ass with vigor, rapaciously pulling you into him and wedging his knee hard between your legs.

As you cry out a pitiful gasp, he sweeps your unkempt hair to the side and then twists it snugly to the nape of your neck. You heave into his embrace, tender breasts pressed into his warm, solid chest and your bound wrists quivering at your stomach. Emet brushes his nose and lips against the exposed skin of your neck, feathering them upwards to the sensitive shell of your ear.

“You cannot have all the fun, my angel,” he murmurs dryly, his breath hot, tickling and you can hear the deep intonation of desire dripping in his voice. He pulls at your hair slowly and with just the right amount of ache to make you groan in pleasure, sharply reclining your neck backwards. Then he places a luridly soft kiss to the skin at the hollow of your throat before letting his hands fall from you altogether.

You hear a snap and suddenly an unseen force grips vehemently onto your wrists, forcibly yanking them up and then backwards behind your head. A sad little thing of a breathy shriek shoots from your lungs as you are briskly pulled up to the headboard. Panic infiltrates your senses as you pull back from the hold, but it is far too powerful for your physical strength to fight against. Your hips instinctively buck up in the struggle and your heart stops when you thud into a decidedly solid form.

Warm hands tense with sheer power at your writhing hips, and the notion strikes you that you are panting quite avidly, the hot flesh of your partner sliding over you in full naked glory. Emet’s tongue and teeth drag over your skin until reaching your throat. From there, he keenly inhales—seemingly breathing in your essence and then sucking at the flesh over your jugular as his soft white bangs fall and tickle against your collarbone.

As his tongue and teeth mark you as his, a sharp piercing sensation washes over as skin breaks, and you feel his long fingers fall between your thighs to dive deep into your molten core. The other hand is preoccupied with clasping the ample, soft flesh of your breast, coiling your nipple just so. His length rubs at your thigh, digging into you as a loud cry falls from your lips, while his thumb begins to sinfully roll around your clit with precision and you can only helplessly grind into his hand. Lewd and embarrassing sounds of your slick flesh against his touch fill the large room.

The muscles in your shoulders and biceps are throbbing as you pull against whatever magicks Emet has used to bind you. It feels like an extension of his dark aether and yet not, as it disturbingly slithers forth and pulls you back tightly as a serpent would. Fingers uselessly wriggle as if it would ever make a difference. You love it but you also hate it. The power stripped from you, subjugating you to be under his mercy.

And he knows your weakness. He knows that you cannot pull from your raw, defiled aether to break free from these restraints, at least not without a great conduit to draw its strength from. For it would break you, possibly tip you over the edge.

Is that what he wants? What a tragically poignant trap it would be.

Mindless trepidation begins tingling at you like tiny claws hooking savagely into your viscera and it must be readily apparent that you have begun to hyperventilate, Emet breaking his lips away from your neck to gaze into your eyes. You try, so desperately try to not look the part of the fool—one who so readily embraced the darkness and yet cannot take the heat of your wayward deeds.

But you _are_ afraid. That you will become that grotesque creature that the Light promised you would become, ever since you took the first bite at Holminster Switch. 

Emet says your name again, that same aspect of concern painted all over his features. His fingers carefully pull away from your sex and caress along your waist, the other arm bracing his body over yours, hand cradling your head and nestled softly in your hair.

The binding dissipates and your hands are now free, allowing you to slowly drop your arms down. His hand shifts to lightly graze fingers over the sting at your neck and you feel the pain wane away, the skin there cooled and mending. He is much too close. Your breath is hitching in your dry throat ever so slightly and your eyes are starting to burn again. He leans in to press a chaste kiss to the corner of your mouth, the gold in his eyes chasing the reflection of smouldering embers in the fireplace.

The lighting has dimmed to nothing so that it is only the fire that burns. Faintly, you wonder when the fire was lit at all and when did it become so somber in this room. He looks so forlorn, so broken as he shifts to run the back of his hand over your cheek.

You can nigh feel it with him, that choking anguish that he is suffering with—the solitude and the loss.

Closing your eyes shut and slipping your fingers into his tresses, you pull his lips back to yours and try to ward it all away, desperately erase it and start anew. Teeth tug at his bottom lip and he groans roughly into your mouth, the kiss quickly escalating to searing hot as his tongue sweeps against yours—the pungent taste of copper intoxicating.

He shifts his body fully over you, his chilling dark aether billowing, swirling about and you wrap your legs around him, moaning into the kiss as his cock drags wickedly against your sodden folds. Tilting your hips just so, your lips break from the kiss but for a moment to breathe, moving your fingers to comb the hair out of his eyes. You press your forehead to his, softly against his third eye and he exhales a shallow, wavering sigh, before angling his jaw to swallow your breath away again. With the kiss, he drives his length slow and steady into you.

A shuddering gasp chokes at the back of your throat at the sensation of him filling you, ilm by ilm until he is deeply seated inside of you as much as your cervix will allow, one of his hands grasped solidly to your hip to keep you stabile. For a moment, he just rests there to allow you to adjust to the feeling—or mayhap the feeling of you decidedly carries him away as well, as he breathes deeply into your lips.

The sensation is nothing short of divine, walls stretched so snugly around his girth to the point that it _aches_. He begins to pull back leisurely but then thrusts into you once more, this time with great force—enough for you to trail your fingernails down his neck and then dig harshly into his broad shoulder blades, thus eliciting a low snarl from him that unfurls fire into the pit of your belly. It is then that his hips start rocking into you, deliciously so, undulating his movements in such a way against yours that you are a sweating mess beneath him, nails clawing and breath stolen.

It had never felt like this with another, not even an iota close. His aether swathes over you, infiltrating through to yours and somehow, you feel as though your soul lies bare before him. As if he knows all your desires, fears, regrets. He takes and takes and takes, drawing you in like a raging tempest and then settles adoration, reassurance, and serenity into you as a balm. It is a song to your soul, to beckon it forth and let go.

Tears prick at your eyes as the feelings flood over and you pull your lips away from his to nuzzle your face into his neck, breathing him in and holding him flush into you. Trying your best to bury the overwhelming throb in your chest, you press your mouth to his shoulder to bite into his warm skin and ebb it away.

With some force, Emet pulls your arms from him and presses your wrists into the soft bed, sliding the grip up slow to lace his fingers with yours. Your hips drive upward with the motion, his cock drilling into you more fiercely and right into the sweetest angle. His name is a chant on your lips and you feel him sucking down your throat, trailing his tongue messily along your sternum before he works his way back up again. It is not long at all before you are quivering uncontrollably under him, walls clenching tightly around him as waves of toe-curling heat edge you closer to release.

His mouth is on your lips again, your tongues entwining hungrily as he places a hand firmly to the small of your back while his other hand grasps under your backside, lifting you easily and coaxing your knees to bend around him so that you are straddled in his lap. You recline your neck back as he grasps your aching breast, massaging and kneading at the tender flesh, then lowering his mouth to tease your nipple with his teeth before rolling it generously with his hot tongue. His other hand is gripped snugly to your hip, guiding you steady onto him as he thrusts from under you.

Soon enough, you are unraveling.

“Emet…” the whisper of his name breaks from your breath as you drape your arms around him, pressing your shivering lips to his brow and then to his third eye. For some reason, it does not sound right to you anymore—that name.

Regardless, Emet groans hoarsely at your voice, muffling his mouth into your heaving breasts. As the pleasure surges and infiltrates through, your movements have become more roughened and erratic. You lean back, rolling your hips into a more purposeful, measured pace as your fingers tug and twist at the hair to the nape of his neck, looking into his eyes. The sight of his skin flushing and his lips parted open, his striking eyes gazing back into your soul—it would have been more than enough to tip you over the edge. But then the words.

“Come for me, love.”

Immediately, you become undone, squeezing and writhing against him, dipping your mouth to his lips to pull him into a fiery and wild kiss to ride your ecstasy out. The obscene resonance of your wet flesh slapping and gushing against his cock fills the air, your throat near choking when Emet’s fingers shift from your hip to your clit in a scorching caress.

The feeling is indescribable, not just of the frenzied heat and rapture of your physical senses but also of something deep, esoteric that there lack words in your vocabulary which are deserving enough for it.

He tenses under your touch as you ride violent against him, his hips twitching while pounding into you in one long, delicious stroke before deeply moaning without inhibition into your lips, beautifully falling apart in bliss from under you. His arms are clutched around your waist, holding you tight against him as if you would blow away as he catches his breath. And a thought flits through your mind that you had never felt so warm. Your fingers cradle gently along his scalp, weaving through his silken hair while he comes down from his high.

There are so many words left unsaid as your eyes search each other, the both of you ensnared so willingly into this dream. So many words which would snap at its fragility much like an eggshell against stone.

There, lost to the outside world, you both attempt to ease oxygen back into shuddering lungs all while swollen lips still graze and your heated touches still caress against one another. After a few moments, it is yet again a tangled mess of sweating limbs and burning kisses, tumbling down on the sheets to begin anew. As if there is no concept of time. As if you only have forever.

Some time later, no idea as to what hour it is, you are lying on your side and twisted into the sheets with Emet’s sleeping form beside you. His arm is draped around your ribs and his warm body is flush against your back most pleasantly, face nuzzled into the nape of your neck. Nestling your cheek further into the lush pillow, your eyes blearily gaze out of one of the dark windows.

Slumber tugs at your consciousness and just before drifting off, you see something odd that you had not noticed before—a wistful visage of tall spires soaring into the night sky, gleaming brightly with incandescent light.

It hurts to look upon it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... in which tumbling between the sheets with Hades is much like riding a roller coaster.


	6. Beast

_There was never any doubt that she would cut Vauthry down, the wretched and deranged creature that he was. It was not difficult for her to rip the life from his pleading, crazed eyes and thus snuff out any traces of the warped paradise he had dreamt of since he was born. _

_The others looked repentant as they watched him blubbering in defeat on the ground, stamping pathetically like a child that had its candy stolen. The warrior could only look on in contempt with a smattering of dread, as his corporeal form faded into a globe of poisoned blaze. _

_Swallowing the last vestiges of Light into her aching breast, her flesh and soul burying its ever-effulgent spark—she could not help but to quiver just barely on that stage of azure and gold. Just little enough to go unnoticed by her comrades, her breath rasped into the silence and it felt very much like she was awaiting her final judgment at the end of days._

_Yet no sooner than the darkness had enfolded over the skies of Kholusia, the Echo exposed the veracity of her last conquest—and along with it the reality of her deluded fantasy, stripped bare before her sky-blue eyes. And just as it faded, then there was the unbounded Light. _

_As if she had stood a chance to begin with, for all things must come to pass._

You can hear the muffled, panicked voices of your friends. Ryne’s stricken cry reverberates through your deadened ears, and haggard eyes cast upwards to the heavens—a haze of sickening white veiling the dark aloft like noxious smog.

Dropping to your knees, the light seizes and razes you asunder, more voracious and savage than ever. You can scarce breathe, for with every movement your soul shatters.

A voice makes itself known and with desperation, you reach for it. That familiar cowl, the cerulean crystal swept over arm and hand bearing a staff of gilded bronze.

An orb of brilliance flashes and a sharp gust of wind swells past.

_Thank you for fighting for this world. For believing. Fare you well, my friend—my inspiration._

The hot tears are freely cascading even before the gunshot cracks thunderously through the air. And you may as well have been shot through your very heart, G’raha Tia falling before you and the sheer suffering clawing raw within your breast when you squint upon the silhouette in the brazen light.

You had been the absolute fool.

The apathy, nigh boredom in his expression as _he_ steps towards you, with that accustomed encumbrance to his shoulders—though it appears more onerous to him somehow.

Venom coats his tongue as he looks down upon you from beneath his nose. He is disappointed in you, as well he should be.

He bites out something about you becoming a monster and you cannot help but to laugh, no doubt stirring the attention of your comrades. The action rattles at the burgeoning fractures in your soul, flooding anguish through ever more and you stagger forward to brace your palms against the cold stage of your failure.

In opposition to the pure hatred now blazing within your heart, as you look at the Exarch’s limp form splayed out—the blood seeping and staining deep crimson—the ground serves as your anchor, something to grip your reality to, lest you choke past the pain and expend all your remaining will to slaughter Emet-Selch where he stands. That would do no good, for in your weakened state it would only spell your own suicide as well as the demise of all your friends.

Yet still, as your lift your bloodshot eyes to his, you do wish him dead.

Alas, he had been honest but perhaps too much so for you to bear. He places the blame on you, that your broken and pathetic soul is not strong enough. It would have been a different tale if you had been able to endure.

And it hurts, it torturously _hurts_ to know how close you were.

However mentally and physically gut-wrenching this pain is, all your remaining hope pulverized to dust, you can hardly breathe out a word to him. Burning, acrid bile bubbles up your throat and you forcefully retch out puddles of vile light. It sizzles against the ground like putrid acid and you find yourself adrift, gazing at the frothing, crackling substance as the Ascian steps directly in front of you—albeit at a safe distance. It is only his shadow stooping down low against the glimmering gold of the pavement that snaps you from your trance. 

Buckling and heaving against the overwhelming light churning through, your eyes shift to meet his. A sheen of bright luminescence films over as you stare into his golden eyes, and it pains you to discern that you are crestfallen for the haze blinds you from their vivid beauty.

The timbre of his voice is nigh soothing, a sensual and lofty murmur crooning to your senses—if only not for his bitter words weaving the fabric of your imminent fate as a ravenous eater.

You are a sobbing mess, and you can only wonder what the others are thinking as they watch you recede back like a sniveling worm against the Ascian’s atrocity.

Is this what it has come down to? You had thrown caution to the wind and get pummeled to naught, save the sick truth of what you have done. You have forsaken everyone here, all your companions who have fought by your side to bring peace to these lands—all for a man you realize you never really knew.

The Exarch—no, G’raha’s blood is steeped coldly on your hands.

_Ahhh, the irony. What Vauthry achieved through bliss, you will achieve through despair._

Just before he stands, an indistinct softness casts over Emet-Selch’s countenance as he looks upon you, hidden from the view of anyone else. It is only for a split second and mayhap it is all in your addled state of mind.

You barely take note of the fact that he has whisked G’raha away at the snap of his fingers, another unforgiving wave of agony shuddering through your body. He rises up, up to the glaring skies and you are grimly reminded of when he had saved you at the cliffs in the Hills of Amber.

Allowing the pain to wash over as your will crumbles apart, you hear his invitation just before blacking out into oblivion.

* * *

_When the clouded horizon of white, repulsive daylight struck into her wearied eyes upon opening the window of her inn room, the warrior’s knees gave out from under her in shame. Ardbert had not made the blow any easier by telling her that the Scions lied for her sake, feigning ignorance as to why the Light had returned to all of Norvrandt._

All of the secrets and lies, they slowly eat away at you like a withered corpse roasting in the sun for the flies.

Of course, it is obvious that things would only worsen if you were to come clean and tell everyone—not only to the people of the reason behind the light’s return, but to your friends of your relations with the enemy. You dare not even tell Ardbert, a question vexing in the back of your mind as to whether he already knows but has just been silent about it.

That question is soon answered when you finally leave your inn room. He appears behind you just outside the Temenos Rookery, your vision having to adjust to his faded form amidst the forged luminance.

“I cannot pretend to understand exactly what you are going through,” he mutters as he treads to stand by your side. “A hell of a predicament you have gotten yourself into.” The ghost offers a rueful smile, crossing his heavily plated arms and staring out to the horizon towards Lakeland.

Looking down at your feet, your eyebrows furrow and you wonder if he is referring to more than your failure to Norvrandt. “Ardbert, I…” The words trail off, for there is nothing really to say at this point.

“I can imagine how you feel now with the return of the light, that rotten feeling of despair that it was all by your hand. It was much like that for I, all those years ago.” You feel his eyes break from his gaze and fall on you. “But I also know that you are hurting, for _he_ means something to you. You do not want to hurt him, despite everything.”

Were he not a ghost, if only he could be real and breathing—tears flood your eyes as you wish you could lean into Ardbert’s arm, for some sort of comfort. Something to quell the overwhelming sadness eroding your heart. You can only meet his eyes and smother it all out, listen to his phantom voice.

“The path ahead is bursting with thorns, my friend. You can only move forward, no looking back. And I’ll be there for you.” His dark smile shifts to one of ease before turning his head back to look at the stretching distance.

If only things were as simple as hiding away like Feo Ul had originally suggested.

When the Echo fades from your mind in the Umbilicus, it takes all your remaining self-control to not maniacally shriek out from the festering anguish that sinks into your being at the damned satire your life has become. The exposed truth by which you had been ushered to the First, to avert the Eighth Umbral Calamity—and all by the sheer will of the people, truly _your _people with the unrelenting aid of the Exarch. G’raha Tia, who had traversed through space and time to have you rewrite history. You are harshly thrust into cognition, the reason you became a _hero_ in the first place.

You would have to face him. Meet him in the Tempest as was his bidding at Mt. Gulg.

Setting off back to Kholusia with the others, you do not realize that your gait is more sluggish, nigh burned out by what lies ahead. Your shoulders—beset in sorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small, transitional chapter to help break into the angst. Had not planned on rehashing a scene from the game but I felt it necessary for the plot. Also, thank you all so much for the kudos/comments!


	7. Unwritten

You stand dumbfounded outside the Bureau of the Secretariat, so much so that when Y’shtola grazes her finger lightly against your elbow to grasp your attention, she soon realizes that she needs to give you a good shake to break you out of it.

“What is wrong? Did something happen?” she inquires, her delicate eyebrows knit with worry as her frosted opaline eyes search over your face. She is noticeably squinting, no doubt from the diseased luster of your aether.

Forcing an expression of composure that you can only hope bears some form of authenticity, you look down to her clouded irises and wonder what she sees. Does she see how your mind is fraying, not only from the light but from the chaos of jumbled, raving thought that smothers you? How torn you are, how the very notion of what has yet to come is pulling you from under, like the fiercest rip current in the sea? Though blinded in everyday sight, her eyes can certainly see the wicked dance of your aether, how it quakes and fractures in sync with your tattered mind and soul.

“I am okay, I think. I…” you start to say before sighing, lifting your hand to rub uselessly at your temple.

It is pounding with an immense pressure, the most ghastly headache you have experienced yet. You can hear the torrential blood rushing with rage while the caustic burn creeps and clings down along your neck to settle deep within your spine, as stubborn dewdrops to a spider’s web. Ryne could only do so much for your affliction.

Y’shtola purses her lips, placing a finger to her chin as she inspects you. “You require some rest, I should think. It will do you no good for us to face Emet-Selch with you in such a state. I will go fetch Ryne and see if she can treat—“

“No, no. I am fine,” you quickly cut her off, slipping into the best mask of fortitude you can muster to reinforce the point. “Ryne has already done enough. The poor thing needs rest herself.”

This much is true. With the grievous amount of light that your soul is now harboring since Vauthry, it is clear that Ryne—even as the newfound Oracle of Light—has been struggling to provide the succor you require. She spends herself endlessly, to stretch your minutes into hours. Thus, her body grows weaker, channeling the corrupt aether into her own to provide a balance which can never be achieved. The scales are forever tipped against her in this futile endeavor, only staving off that which has already prevailed. You would not allow the child to harm herself for you, not anymore.

You pin a smile of confidence to your lips, and shove down the pain. “Please don’t concern yourself with me. I have actually just acquired a lead to go back and speak with one of those shades at the Hall of Rhetoric. I should see you all at the Capitol soon.”

More lies.

A tight frown turns on Y’shtola’s mouth as she peers up at you with uncertainty, spurring you to spawn a smile more genuine and take a hand to clap against her back for added assurance. “Worry not, my friend. I will see you soon,” you insist before turning your heel to head away, to where exactly—you do not rightfully know.

Sliding your hand into your pocket as you stride off with a semblance of purpose, your fingers wrench and tear at the visitor’s writ you had procured just minutes prior to running into Y’shtola. Your broken breath reels and quails within your breast.

* * *

You do not gauge the time to determine quite how long you walk, nor do you accept the fact that you are presently wandering—dawdling and _procrastinating_, of all things. Although not meaning to do so, you easily become swallowed by the dreamy and gloomed artistry of this city created by Emet-Selch’s hand. The trees of lavender make your eyes blur with tears while the giant shades, though a touch frightening when you had first arrived, now make you beam warmly with cryptic affinity. It all makes your heart race and flutter wildly beneath your ribs, now already throbbing from the forced exertion of your enfeebled state.

Alas, it only makes it all that much easier to scurry away from your problems.

What the shade Hythlodaeus had said to you, about Ardbert and the color of your soul—about Emet-Selch recognizing someone from his past in you. How could you go to the Capitol now, when you know that it will end in only one way? Death, whether his or yours, that point which is the unsullied and finite zenith of a life yet driven for others. To you, for those who can yet be saved; to him, for those who are already long lost.

What has lent you to be the judge to determine whether the lives of ancient souls are less than those yet breathing today?

Groaning noisily in consternation, you trudge into what looks to be some park of sorts. Tiny, fragile white and blue bell flowers line the pristine pavement, breaking off into vibrant green grass surrounding a lovely pond. You raise the heels of your hands to your eyes, crudely scrubbing the errant moisture away. When your aching eyes crack open and blink several times, the bones in your legs turn into gelatin and nigh collapse from under you.

Emet-Selch sits upon the grass, leaning against a tree with branches that sprawl and effloresce an amethystine glow above the water. He is mostly faced away, head sagging back against the trunk in what could likely be slumber. It is quite odd, seeing his stately Garlean regalia besmirched by sitting on the ground, as pretty as the scenery looks besides. One leg is bent lazily to his chest while the other is stretched out in length before him, arms crossed and robes spread out with a certain grace all the same.

Watching him, you find it exceedingly taxing to breathe, as if you are nearly suffocating from just standing there. It does not appear that he notices your presence and you are dreadfully tempted to slip back to find Y’shtola and the others. But then you instantly realize how ludicrous that notion is. How spineless it would be to run away, and to what exactly? You are thrust onto this most disastrous course whether you like it or not—no matter the nature of your opponent.

In the past, before you came to the First, being the hero had usually been uncomplicated. You have always encountered your foes with an inherent sense of calm and mettle, striking headlong into the battles you had been set forth hitherto. You focused on the pain and havoc that they wrought upon the innocent, the death spread forth by their hands—to vanquish their evil and reset the path by which good could prevail. Though this had always been sought after in the name of Hydaelyn and there now existed doubts that swim through your head about Her intent, you know that it at least used to feel so much more clear before.

There at least existed some discernible line of sorts, between you and the enemy. You could then more easily deal with the aftermath of penitence of doing harm to others; allow it to wear down on you bit by bit until you have been numbed to the plausible subterfuge in your path as the Warrior of Light.

It used to be much simpler, when you did not really understand your adversary. Coming to Amaurot, or rather the constructed memory of what it once was, has made things so much more convoluted—even more so after all that has transpired with Emet-Selch. You are learning more of yourself than ever. Something about your soul is tied to his; you have gleaned upon this for some time. Hythlodaeus’ words only confirmed that which you already knew. And it makes it all that much more challenging to face him, knowing this and what is expected of you as the _hero_.

But then you remember. The light currently riving your soul apart and destroying you is all by his doing. The reason G’raha Tia brought you forth to the First was to thwart the Eighth Umbral Calamity, to save the countless numbers of lives that Emet-Selch has been so keen to blot out to naught for the Rejoining. The same would be ultimately accomplished for all of the other remaining shards, so much blood spilled upon his hands.

There exists a great divide between you and he, one which is nigh futile to cross for want of no other solution than the death of legions. Somewhere, G’raha is in danger and you are the only one who can save him. The only one who can yet save this world. It is as Ardbert said. The only path is forward and it would be one of intense suffering.

Emet has not moved from his place against the tree and you vaguely wonder if he is actually sleeping. You are standing at least a dozen or so fulms from where he sits but you think it in your best interest to remain where you are. The wrath scrapes gratingly within your veins, much like the light that is constricting through and splintering your being. It cleaves its ruthless way forth and just as you are about to open your mouth, his tired voice stills you.

“So you have come to me alone, after all.”

Your breath is cut short, and whatever you were going to say instantly shrivels and dies upon your tongue. For some silly reason, there is that annoying twinge of ache to your eyes again and already the water is brimming into your fuzzy vision. As he wearily lifts himself off of the grass to stand and then turns to face you, a tremor ripples across your bottom lip unbidden.

You do not want to show your tears to the Ascian, for he is not deserving of them. This is what you tell yourself, a chant desperately humming in your mind to somehow claw your way out of the cascade of emotions that is rushing through as he steps nearer. But the look on his face is stealing away your holed up rage, what you have been carrying since Vauthry—or rather, what you have been carrying for longer than you can remember. It is quite difficult to think clearly at this point.

His eyes are locked to yours, more melancholy etched into the amber than ever. The fine skin along the hollows appears even more darkened than before, bringing a great contrast to his pallor. A long sigh drags from his lips as he stops a few fulms away and breaks his gaze from yours to drift over your person. Pain seeps into his eyes as he does so, wincing ever so from the action.

He appears to be looking further than just at the surface but more so _through_ you, at your soul—as Ryne and Y’shtola have done in the past, and as he had done so many times before… with a wistful hope.

A hope that is now cold and lifeless.

“This was not my plan,” he whispers softly as his eyes meet yours again, and a tear breaks free to pool and cage itself within the fringes of your eyelash at his words. It soon streams swift and hot past your cheek, dripping onto the collar of your jacket and blooming its white to dull grey.

Silently, you grind your jaw down and try to forget that you had exposed any weakness. You swallow slowly with some effort, making a vain attempt to sound strong with your response.

“Wh… what does that mean?” The words in your leaden voice are weighed down cruelly by the sob hanging deep within your throat, the tears of frustration and contrition and… _heartbreak_.

Your eyes search his, foolishly expecting to find some answer there but then also not wishing to know all the same. The notion strikes you that are faltering again, and so cast your eyes downward away from his to discover that you are pathetically wringing your hands. Mentally you vehemently curse yourself and drop your arms to your sides again, righting your posture to stand tall before him.

When you look back at him, you see that he appears to be lost in rumination and his focus is trained on the plush grass as if he is rolling over all the thoughts in his mind of what to say. It is disorienting to see someone such as he, in struggle with speech.

“This was not supposed to be. I…” Emet breathes out, closing his eyes for a moment and pressing his gloved fingertips tight to the bridge of his nose. “You are a mere fragment, a shell of what once was.”

The statement bites out with a certain acerbity that should hurt, but does not for some reason. Perhaps you had heard it too much from him by now. He stops himself from saying anything more, and appears as if he bears some form of misgivings for what has already been said. He does not want this conversation.

You purse your lips firmly with a sense of foreboding, speculating on whether you should ask or not. It does not take much time to decide.

“In a past life, were we once lovers… in Amaurot?” The mumbled words are barely audible and you already know the answer, but you want him to say it. You are not aware that your foot has taken a step forward, and that your form is ever so slightly swayed towards him in anticipation.

It is as if the air suspends itself, becoming congealed and clinging like viscous glue to your lungs. Then a veil lifts, and you can breathe again when Emet’s hand falls from his face and his brilliant eyes bury themselves into your flesh.

Something awakens within him, it is just barely evident. Something about his posture.

“You were someone else all those eons ago. You are a ghost of _her_. The most stunning and vibrant person I had ever met, with the most unique hue upon her soul that I have yet to find in any other.” His glowing gaze pulls itself away from you to cast aloft into the murky darkness carved by towering, obsidian spires. “The color of sky and sunlight.”

The stirring inflection of his words are steeped in longing and heartache, that same song woven into his voice of when he has ere spoken of the past. Much to your chagrin, a strange sentiment of envy awakens within you. Resentment, even. It fumbles and rolls its way through your viscera like a coin until it comes to turn upon its head, fully burnished and bare. You cannot help yourself for your actions.

“I am to assume that is why you were so drawn to me all this time, all because I am a reflection of _her_?” you nearly spit out. “Why were you not just upfront about it? That way I would have at least known I was playing second fiddle to your dead lover from long ago.” The words twist out of your mouth, embittered and singed with hate. The tears dry fast in the wake of the fury burning within.

“What did you even wish to gain from any of this?” You find that your breathing is labored, your hands clenched into fists as you spew out the nonsensical question.

This is what you had feared when you glimpsed upon that hope in his eyes. The way he looked at you, how you seemed so precious to him but with another on his mind all along. Deep down, you knew this and yet you yielded even so. It is a misdirected anger, though it is not just the same.

Emet sets his jaw before dropping his dark eyes to your fatigued form again, inhaling sharply to where his nostrils flare at the action. A muted anger of his own creeps across his features as he scrutinizes you, as if he is sizing you up for battle now so soon. His brow sets high, with a sneer trailing past his lips. “_Gain_? I could very well ask the same question of you, dear hero. Just what did the Warrior of Light have in mind when she spread her legs wide open for a Paragon of the Source?”

His response lashes out harsh like a whip and you have to bite your tongue to prevent from saying something that would take you both too deep. Although, why did any of that matter now? You are at your end now, in every sense of the word—at the end of the rope.

A particular raking pang of ache crosses through your body and steals your breath for a moment, leather clad fingers gripping ever so rigidly to the seam of your jacket to brace yourself. The air is still and dead in Amaurot, with the soaring and spiraling edifices huddling, _suffocating_ around you as a figurative vice to the skull. With the greatest of efforts, your face remains stoic as you look back at the Ascian.

“Where is the Exarch?” you ask evenly, careful to brush off any scorn from your tone. There is not enough time for selfish frivolities such as this. Far too much time has already been wasted.

Emet stares at you for a while, nigh incredulously and his lips curl into a most mirthless smile. Then a deeply rich laughter splits and echoes through the silence as he closes the remaining distance between you both, stopping his saunter just a fulm before you. Before the thought alarms you to back away, his silken soft fingers have already gripped tight to your chin and he leans down ever so slight to level his blazing eyes with yours.

“Never you mind about _him_, my love. If I were you, I would be more worried about the skin on my own back,” he whispers just against your lips, the words lulling and stretching out into more of a purr—effectually droning all of your thoughts away.

His warm breath on your mouth causes you to lose focus but for just a moment.

A moment too long, you realize as you attempt to rip yourself away from him to no avail. One arm is already snaked around you, a hand planted firmly at the curve of your waist. The other hand slithers down from your chin, smooth silk running cool against your hot skin, down the flesh of your neck and just over your larynx. There is an involuntary reflex for you to swallow slow with his fingers yet held still against your throat. This then bids his aurulent eyes to break from where they had followed his grasp to again stare into yours.

All notions to fight back have deserted your body, as if you are paralyzed to his touch. A detached concern flits through your mind that it is his magicks to blame, slaking and draining what little energy you have left.

But then, as his fingers crook into the tender flesh of your throat and his lips skim lightly over your mouth, you feel you are swirling in raven and violet gloaming—like a moonstruck ballerina spinning into arms of stygian madness. You allow him to pull you away and carry you off to his lair, foolhardy and besotted warrior that you are.

And it was not hard at all… to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thoughts! I love to hear from y'all :D  
A lovely album to check out that I have drawn some inspiration from with this story, if you are into instrumental- from Sylvain Chauveau [right here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW-hmkZSmF4&list=PLSjc8Z5Z5KGCcW8-pacWj3LzPIMiG-TQb). You'll notice that the last chapter title was borrowed from a song on this album.


	8. Howling -EX-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name for this chapter was borrowed from a song by the same title from RY X. Here is a [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVsnxChEofs) to Cathedrals' cover, which I find more fitting to the tone of this writing. The lyrics fit quite appropriately, so much so that I was tempted to do a songfic. I recommend giving it a listen while you read. ;)

A stinging sensation splits into your flesh as the wafts of arcane energy twist around your fractured being, held fast within the Ascian’s arms. Your face instinctively burrows deep into his chest, the fur lining of his robes pluming out and tickling against your nose. You feel as weightless as gossamer while he ushers you through the portal with him, through the void and into a strange place that prickles your flesh as soon as you arrive.

It is another bedroom of sorts, wholly unlike that of the other he had brought you to before Mt. Gulg. Towering windows surround this room, from all sides. It is black as night outside with no stars in sight. It seems as if he has taken you to one of those tall spires that loom over the recreated cityscape in Amaurot. Incandescent light bleeds from the ceiling from an unseen source, hazing a surreal glow to the massive and sumptuous bed, set in the middle of the room. Everything is laden in opulent gold and onyx, the floor of dusky black marble. The whole space decidedly feels less warming, more sepulchral and cold—portentous, in a sense. It feels like a stage readied for battle.

The fingers at your throat flex and tense ever so, prompting you to shift your eyes to your captor. The feeling against your skin feels much hotter, more visceral. And if your heart could drop from your rib cage before your feet, it would have already done so as mindless shock seizes you entirely. Emet-Selch has shredded the visage of Solus zos Galvus. What you see is so painfully familiar, your eyes spill over tears unbidden and unbeknownst to you.

A crimson mask, dipping from the bridge of his refined nose and angled downward harshly to his chiseled jawline—shrouding his eyes, cheekbones and forehead in sharp and fiendish lines. Stark white strokes smooth through the bloodied red, serving to capture your dancing eyes until they fall on the shining aurum within the dark hollows of the mask.

Inadvertently, your body tumbles into him as you feel faint, and only then do you notice that he wears sable robes of a plain but rich material. The fabric sweeps neatly around your shivering frame as his hand at your throat shifts to steady you at the hip. The robes are reminiscent of those worn by the giant shades, like what Hythlodaeus wore, but more finely woven. The lustrous, wintry white bangs of his mane fall over your face as his lips shadow over yours. And then you are queerly reminded of times of eld, before you came into this world in this flesh, as if you are not within your corporeal form any longer. For a fleeting moment, you think that there is something not quite right about his hair.

“You asked me what I wished to gain by approaching you,” Emet murmurs low, mouth grazing against yours and his breath fanning fire over your skin. “You were always taunting me, bewitching me. Seven times rejoined, your soul has never been so close. Everything about you screams of her, and yet not. She lacked that callous nature I see just beneath…”

A hand moves to weave gently through your hair and instinct takes over for you to sigh out, jaw tilted ever so into his touch. He is not wearing gloves now and he has the slightest trace of a smile, bare fingers brushing the back of your neck. “I wonder if I helped to bring that out in you.” His voice is but a burning whisper.

Before you realize it, his soft lips are capturing yours into a ghost of a kiss and then his teeth are nipping sharply at your bottom lip. The fine edge of the mask cuts mildly into the bridge of your nose. It would be horridly easy to yield into him and, although you desperately attempt to clutch onto some form of resolve, you are beginning to lose it. You breathe into his skin and find yourself melting into him.

But ire gradually infiltrates your senses as his words finally sink into your mind, just as your lips open to let him in. You hurriedly pry yourself viciously from his grasp, backing away from him to catch your breath. Your hair flares wildly in your face with the motion and you must brace your footing to keep from tripping backwards, panting heavily as you stare back at his dark form standing before the bed.

He has a crooked smirk plastered on his mouth as he watches you from beneath the mask. It blossoms your rage for him, all while you feel the light roasting you from the inside yet again.

How close to that of a monster, of an _eater_, you must look as a spasm of ache coils and convulses through your entrails. You bite your lip until it trickles cardinal red, as the light quakes your bursting soul and you dig the heel of your boot into the fine flooring to save yourself from collapsing into a pathetic, weeping heap before the Ascian.

The smile starts to waver on his lips, yet you do not take notice.

“No, _you_ do not get to touch me. I-I am in this state because of you,” you hiss out before the pain has had time to pass over, your voice shaking with the throes of swelling torment. “I am not your plaything.”

Wayward tears fall while you try to take control of the situation, though it feels so hopeless now as you feel Emet’s gaze appraise you in silence. You start to reach for your weapon, only to realize that it is not at your side anymore. “Gods damn it, of course,” you curse bitterly under your breath. You meekly wonder if you could have ever gained the upper hand with this being, even as the Warrior of Light.

“Tell me... tell me where the Exarch is.” The words rushing forth from your mouth now sound more like a weakened stammer than anything else. “I-I can’t...” you pause, feeling a sob catch sharply in your throat. “I cannot let them down.” You do not take note of the fact that you are shuffling your feet backward.

This is the last thing you would have ever wanted—to expose this frailty, this impotence.

Emet sucks his breath in to your words before clicking his tongue in tutting sound, then shrugging off the heavy robes and tossing them to the side of the bed. The mask is gone with the snap of a finger. As your eyes span over his unveiling, the fear wanes by just a fraction. Deep black slacks with a crisp white button-up, assembled with a form-fitting ebony waistcoat. Emet’s fingers leisurely work the first couple of buttons open at the collar as he steps towards you to close the distance that you had created.

He looks at you like you are his last meal.

“You always do this, placing your needs beneath those of others. Do you think that they would do much the same?” he asks in a supercilious tone, and suddenly he is far too close. “Beg for the life of another when your own is so sweetly in my grasp?”

Unwittingly, your foot stumbles back and strikes something hard. A sonorous echo rumbles through your boot from the impact and into the space of the room, and you do not understand what you have clashed with until you feel the chill at the back of your calves. Your back is pressed into a tall glass window.

A darkened, self-assured aspect glazes over Emet’s eyes. He is now well within your space, nigh a fulm away. You hold in a gasp when he reaches the fingers of one hand to toy at the open hem of your jacket, as he braces his other hand against the cold window. He is so close you can almost feel the silent fall of his breath.

“They would help me, I know it.” The words snap out of your mouth, with no small amount of disparagement. Whether it is the truth, it matters not.

Silently, you wonder where Ardbert is. It would be a long shot for him to be able to do anything for you, but surely he had to be bearing witness to this. Your eyes dart around the large room for any sign of his ghostly form, to find nothing.

A grin forms on the Ascian’s dark lips, sinister and tinged with malice. “If only they could.”

A shiver rolls down the ache of your spine, pressed firm into the glass. It is much too hot all of a sudden. The heat flushing over your skin ventures you to wish yourself free of the jacket, as Emet’s hand pushes past the opening, around the buckle to graze his touch over your skimpy tunic. As his finger traverses upward so _very_ deliberate, over each dip of each rib and to the underside of your breast, you must stifle a whimper and push even further into the glass to prevent from nudging into him.

There being an apparent annoyance with the barrier, a snap resounds by your ear and the jacket is gone—leaving your upper body more or less bare to the cool air. The tunic is flimsy, low-cut and sleeveless. The bra you chose to wear, terribly thin. You should push Emet away but you do not.

He meets you in the eye as his middle finger delves under the curve of your breast, thumb brushing against your hardened and painfully sensitive nipple. Your head droops against the glass and the moan that slips from your mouth is practically preordained, then followed by his warm hand cupping the soft tissue roughly, greedily. And as his mouth hovers over your lips, it is you that breaks the distance—tongue twisting against his and breath cut short. Your nails are biting into the flesh of his neck as you pull him into you and a leg soon finds itself hooked around his hip. It feels like a manic dream and there is nothing to stop it.

“What do you think they would say if they saw you now, dear hero?” he taunts heatedly in between your lips, fingers clawing down the feeble fabric at your shoulder and ripping at the seams of the bra to free your breast into the warmth of his hand.

You can only cry out muffled and wanton into his mouth, heaving into his grasp. _They_ are long from your thoughts, for all you can think is how he is making you feel in this moment.

Ice-cold aether showers over you, like a rainstorm crashing over the hot coals of your skin—your soul—and shallow pants escape your lungs as Emet drags his lips down your chin to your throat. Fingers slip from his neck to the silky, thick burgundy locks of his scalp and sharp teeth scrape past your clavicle, inciting you to grind into the hardened erection in his slacks.

Emet huffs deep into your skin, a hint of a snickering laugh to his breath that tapers into a low and long moan as you work your hips into him. “What would your Mother think?” he utters sardonically before edging down lower, hotly gasping into the swell of your breast as his hands slide down the back of your thighs to hoist you up with ease against the glass. Your long skirt is hiked up with the movement, your calves locking around his waist.

You try your best to overlook the words he says and his mouth does much to help the cause, tongue lashing out and laving onto your tender nipple. While one of his hands is supporting your weight alongside the window—kneading into the soft yield of your thigh and backside, the other is tearing down the other sleeve of your tunic into a tattered mess. Soon enough, his fingers are tweaking and pulling at your neglected breast, as his teeth are claiming the other. This compounded with the mounting affliction of the light, it is sensory overload.

The groans slipping from your mouth sound more broken, so animalistic. You feel detached, as if you are unsheathing and untethering from your skin. The need for him is all the more frenzied, and you have to touch him—you have to _feel_ him.

Latching onto the fine hair at the nape of Emet’s neck, you pull him from your breast and the sight of crimson floods your eyes. You dip your head down to press your mouth onto his, lips already parted and tongue begging for a fight. A growl resonates from the back of his throat and into you, as you release your legs from around where they had already sagged to his hips and thus slide yourself teasingly slow against his pulsing length. All you taste is copper on your tongue, as it coils and licks against his. You should worry about how savage his attentions were, but you do not.

After a moment, you press your hand forcefully against Emet’s chest to push him back. A trace of confusion crosses over his countenance before you grasp the front of his waistcoat and rend it open, a confetti of buttons dancing in the air and clattering to the floor. Its sound echoes out hollow within the room. Your fingers are already clawing at the buttons to his shirt, working it out of his pants as he crashes back into you, harshly gripping the hair at the back of your skull while he devours your breath.

His mouth drifts from yours to traverse along your neck and he soon begins sinking down your body. Hot tongue and teeth trail down the valley of your breasts, his palms stroking and massaging your peaks in his descent. When his mouth reaches the hem of your skirt, you hear a snap and the copious fabric as well as your boots dissolve into violet, ebon mist, revealing only delicate, prim white panties in its wake.

Emet hums in approval as you hitch your thigh over his shoulder and slump into the glass, his hot breath fanning over the soaking fabric at your sex. His nose burrows into your crevice, breathing you in before his tongue broadly swipes over your flesh through the paltry material. A deep moan billows from your breast, your hips buckling into his mouth and your knees weaken from under you. Another snap and something tingling cool binds onto your wrists and slings them upwards, bracing you against the tall window.

You drag your eyes from the Ascian betwixt your legs, whose one hand is still gripping your clenched thigh around him, and see that his darkened aether is coiled around your arms. However, his tongue quickly breaks your attention, working against your lips and excruciatingly over your clit, muted ever so by the feeble weave of your smallclothes. Soon, a finger hooks over the seam and pulls the boundary to the side, and then his red-hot, searing touch laps smooth over you in full, tasting your need for him without restraint.

You are lost in a sea of tumultuous sensations, driving your hips into Emet’s eager mouth, his tongue spreading through your folds and rolling over your clit. Even though you are firmly held in place by shadowed aetherial tethers, it does not stop his death grip on your thigh which has now slid up to your ass to plant you firmly against his hungry maw. The deft fingers of his free hand easily wrench and rip the unwanted cloth of the panties away. He then works those fingers into you with ease, two from the start—stretching you achingly against his touch.

Your cries are even more broken, feral and wild, as you lift and pull from the glass to gain control again. You feel like a caged beast, the light striking through your core, filtered through with the carnal heat between your thighs. Jet black tendrils slither past your skin from the periphery of your vision, snaking over the unattended flesh of your breasts. They toy and flick over your raw nipples, while caressing the soft tissue with a possessive need. As you look down at Emet’s dark golden gaze, he is watching you with rapt attention, as his fingers fall from your quivering walls and his tongue twists forth to replace them. It wickedly expands in girth and thrusts into you, throbbing and filling you to completion.

You can barely breathe, as he fucks the air out of your lungs with his mouth, delving against that sweet zone that has you unfolding and withering apart before him like a delicate flower amidst the bend of the wind. His thumb comes to graze sizzling slow over your clit even as he does so and you lurch fiercely with the action. It feels as though you come down into pieces as the waves of euphoria pull you through the ecstasy, to that heightened peak of bliss and the cracks within your being—your _soul_—collapse all the more around you. It should make you panic, but you are far too gone to care.

The tendrils continue to work against your flesh as Emet’s tongue pulls from your dripping lips, laving hotly against your ultra-sensitive skin and bathed in your juices. The aetherial bindings slacken their hold and your weakened body slides forth against him until he firmly grasps your waist. You are barely cognizant when Emet claws his fingers into your trembling hips and turns you with force to face the fogged window, pressing your form against its chilly surface. Your breasts swell against it with the thundering of your lungs, smudging flaking, dried blood along the translucent glass.

A warm hand comes to dip between your thighs and then fingers hook inside your molten cunt, making you gasp out as your cheekbone rubs raw into the window. Another hand strokes over the tense muscles of your back, scorching over the skin until it comes to coil around your throat.

“I wonder…” Emet rasps, pulling your neck painfully back to nestle his mouth at your ear. “If they can see you now, writhing in my grasp. So willing and _devoted_ to the cause.” A perverse, somewhat crazed sort of laughter pervades into the space, his fingers beginning to tighten and cut off your airways.

An instant of clarity barbs against your consciousness and you instinctively push your hips backward to break from the hold. In the struggle, his fingers push into your sex so pleasingly, his thumb rolling over the swollen nub of your clit. It feels so good that your strength ebbs into his touch, even as his hand squeezes your throat and it is exceedingly difficult to breathe. Your vision is blurring into white. You should fight it, but all you can do is whimper. It feels amazing.

Just as you think you are falling away, Emet releases ever so and the clouds clear softly from your eyes. His lips press into yours with such an intensity as if he trying to consume you, his tongue bringing you back to life as you attempt to match his fervor. Yet he is first to break the kiss, saliva spooling and stretched from your needy mouth as he pulls away. His hands gather at your hips again, adjusting you just so from the window and you have to wonder with raving anticipation where this is headed.

At once, he frees himself from his confining pants, pulling your backside against him and your back arches in such a way to allow him to easily bury his pulsing length inside of you. Emet drives his cock in as far as he can go, with none of the gentleness as he had used in the past.

You scream out as he plunges _hard_ into your cervix and his own loud groan follows, snapping his hips back to thrust powerfully into you again. It is impossible to control the shake of your knees as his girth rips through your tightened, clenching cunt. One of his hands crawls up along your bowed spine to catch into your hair, coiling your tresses to the nape of your neck and tugging with just the right amount of pressure. Your hands are splayed uselessly against the glass as he begins fucking you with abandon, and your screams become hoarser, more bestial with every wicked stroke.

Dark aether swarms and nigh smothers around you, tendrils grasping and pulling cold along your sweating skin. There is none of the sweet intimacy as before, though that was naught but a fleck of dust to the power teeming through your aether now.

That sweet, _sweet_ aether.

You feel immaculate, impossibly ceaseless as the skies above the deep ocean you are under. Your eyes settle along the pallid skin of your forearm, to see splinters of light coursing, _breaking_ through and vines of resplendent gold, just before your vision dims to obsidian.

Bucking against him, you push back and Emet allows you to twist your form back to face him, threading your fingers into his hair. You think that you can sense pain in his gilded eyes as you pull him into a kiss, tongue sliding over his lips before tangling with his. It is no matter, for you can make that go away.

Pressing him backwards, you sway him into the center of the room to the bed. You let a hand trail down the back of his neck, as his hands roam over your burning skin, and tug the collar of his shirt down—the fabric all too effortlessly shredding down beneath your fingertips. Emet tenses against you as move your hand away and when you look at your nails, they are unnaturally long and steeped in his blood. For some reason, it does not bother you as it should. Instead you nudge him further along, stepping over the tattered remnants of his shirt until you have him just before the bed.

Deeply, you move your tongue against his, breathing him in, relishing his hands at your breasts and his lovely aether swathing over you. Thinking nothing of it, your teeth catch his lip and pierce through soundlessly, then breaking away and crawling over him until he falls onto the soft sheets with you straddled on top of him.

You open your mouth to tell him how much you want him, how much you _love_ him, his blood smeared against your tongue and lips. But nothing comes out, as if you have not the voice to do so. Emet looks up at you with a forlorn gaze, licking his wounded lip before pulling you forward by the crook of your arm. There is still that pain to his eyes, as if he is hurting ever so just by touching you. But his lips are hungrily on yours, gathering you to him in a tender embrace. The kiss stretches long and slow, filled with a yearning passion that only lovers would share. In the midst of it all, the remainder of his clothing cascades and furls off of him into inky black so that there is nothing between you both but flesh.

Your back arcs as he enters you, his cock sheathed exquisitely and nigh to the hilt within your aching sex. You shudder and convulse around him, undulating your hips to retract back and then crash down. He moans into your lips, his hands all over your skin and seemingly not able to get enough—over thighs, hips, stomach, breasts. His aether is swirling over and around you and the feel of it, the _taste_ of it is so delicious.

Throwing your head back, you grind into his hips and let him fill your cunt, the gushing sounds of your flesh reverberating and ringing through your ears, which are so sensitive. When did everything become so loud, so shrill and deafening? Emet’s forefinger gliding over your clit brings you back with a strangled gasp, and your movements begin to buckle over him as you feel you are so close to the edge, so soon.

Just as you feel you are coming undone, something begins itching furiously at your back—a dreadfully horrid burn it is. You want to bring your hands to it, to understand what it is but a tiny inkling of… what is it? Fear? Yes, perhaps fear or something of that nature tells you to not, to let it pass—to _bloom_. And it does, it blooms gloriously.

Fragile, golden feathered wings tear and split themselves from the skin on your back, bloodied and rustling behind you in splendor. They heave and flutter out as you flex your new appendages, flecking sprinkles of crimson—tainted with motes of brilliance—against the pure white sheets and much of the room besides.

The Ascian beneath you, nestled between your thighs, can only look on in awe as you unravel before him, unleashing yourself as you quicken to that apex of bliss. It hits you full force, and you spread your grand wings with burgeoning strength as you ride out the climax. You feel his hot seed flood inside you as the ecstasy washes through your form and you fall over to kiss him sweetly, careful not to hurt him even though you are so very famished.

There are tears in his eyes and you cannot comprehend why. More and more, all you can think of is how hungry you are.

After a moment, the man shifts from under you, leaving you alone on the bed. He snaps his fingers with a lackadaisical energy, donning black robes with metallic pauldrons and accents, cleaning up his mussed appearance. But the tears are still falling, though he tries to keep them hidden.

You can smell the bitter salt of them.


	9. Dénouement

“This is not right,” spoke the deadened voice drawn from the soul that should have perished long ago, extinct with the passage of eons. “You were…” He stopped when he realized that he was using past tense, and it bore down on his conscience ever more.

It was not right. He should have never fallen for her again. It was meant to be such a trifling matter, deluding everyone to trust him—and right from the start, he wanted her to have faith in him more than any of the others. As she was different, and her soul was so… _her_ while still so unique at the same time, it bedeviled him to keep his distance. With every step he chanced to take, every damned path led him back to her.

“I... I am sorry,” Emet-Selch said, a trembling and pensive laugh broken sour from his breath, and unwanted tears stung his eyes. His hand stiffened tight into a fist within his clawed glove. “This was the only way to set our star upon the right path—to regain that which was lost to us in that time before time. All of this hard work could not have been for naught.” His voice had dwindled down to a whisper, as he gazed at the warrior.

He pondered the reasoning for explaining anything to her, to this mindless creature. Her chin tilted to his words but her eyes were dull and without feeling. Those lovely blue eyes, now darkened to dead black. For what he had done, there was nothing to say that would grant any form of redemption. Though, that mattered not to him. He just wanted to talk to her again, hear her voice—even if it was to only scream at him in rage.

“I love you,” he murmured into the silence, his eyes searching her face for any sign of recognition to his words but finding none. The ache in his breast shuddered harshly through him. For all this tempering, why could his god not strip away this pain along with everything else He had taken?

Emet-Selch breathed a deep sigh and closed his eyes, in an effort to compose himself. When he opened them, they settled on the warrior with a bone-tired resolve. “You shall slake this land of life and I will watch you burn it to the ground. We will continue our course to rejoin these flawed reflections and, by Zodiark’s will, your soul will be hale and whole yet again. And then, my love…” His voice trailed off into an empty pause, as the burden sank in sharp and weighed greater, so much more vast than ever before—even after all those thousands and thousands of years.

The warrior stared at the Ascian, the last shreds of consciousness flitting away from her grasp. But just before completely descending into nothing, her vision bled into vivid white. 

_... _

_“What a pair you two make!” a gleeful voice exclaimed from behind, and she could only bite her lip in defeat. _

_The man holding her laughed, the deep chuckle rattling his embrace around her shoulders. He dipped his mouth down to hover warm lips over hers, masks scraping ever so by the action. “I think we’ve been spotted,” he whispered before kissing her gently. Silken white hair tickled against her face, and a shiver coursed through her spine as she met the pale gold in his eyes._

_She could not help but to smile into his kiss for just a small moment before batting him away and turning around quickly, thankful her mask covered the burning flush to her cheeks. “Hythlodaeus… you did not see anything!” _

_A finger slid down her palm, inciting her to gasp._

_“Hades! Stop that!” she scolded with a giggle, her heart quickening as his fingers twined around hers. _

...

“We shall be together again,” he said softly.

It was his voice that brought the warrior back.

The warrior opened her lips to say his name, a resurrected volition grasping desperately to that last thread of cognizance. To say his _true_ name, one that she would never be able to call him. Alas, try as she might—nothing would come. Hot tears sprang into her eyes as she tried to simply mouth it to him.

Hades looked back at her, brows furrowing with great disquiet as he did so.

But as soon as it was there, it was gone.

Her eyes became hollow.

Hunger reigned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this was my first fanfic ever. A *huge* thanks to everyone who read, dropped kudos, and commented on this work!!  
Please let me know your thoughts, any improvements or what have you. :D


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